Enhance connectivity with Rocket.Chat 8.0

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Most communication platforms are built for stability. They assume a relatively stable model in which access, context, and collaboration boundaries are configured ahead of time, and will remain valid as work progresses. That assumption does not hold in real operations. 

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As situations escalate, scope and sensitivity change in real time, yet execution has to continue. When access and context lag behind those changes, connectivity drifts because the system no longer mirrors how work is actually being done.

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Rocket.Chat v8.0 is built for this reality. It strengthens the connective tissue between people, access, communication and context by treating connectivity as a unified system rather than a set of independent features. This release brings together:

• Attribute-based access controls for identity-driven connectivity that reflects current scope and sensitivity, not yesterday’s structure
• Native federation (beta) for secure connectivity across agencies and allied networks, without compromising governance or control 
• Voice calling (general availability) to support real-time escalation for better situational awareness and faster decision-making
• Intelligent search (beta) to connect fragmented intel and signals across rooms and time windows for a bird’s-eye view of mission intelligence

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“Across the deployments we support, we’ve come across one key requirement: connectivity must adapt as operations evolve, without fragmenting access, losing context, or creating gaps that surface later. Rocket.Chat v8.0 is the product of the premise.”

~ Gabriel Engel, CEO @ Rocket.Chat

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Attribute-based access controls for identity-first, Zero Trust connectivity

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Zero Trust is built on a simple premise that access is never permanent, and that trust must be continuously re-evaluated. 

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Oftentimes, the customer environments we build for, operate under strict classification constraints. 

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Every collaboration surface has to answer a single question in real time: who is allowed in this conversation right now. Access must be adapted immediately, otherwise the connectivity is no longer secure. 

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That’s why connectivity in these scenarios begins with identity, because identity determines who can connect to what, when, and under which constraints. 

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Rocket.Chat v8.0 treats this as a first-order problem by introducing Attribute-Based Access Controls (ABAC). 

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• ABAC governs channel access based on what the organization knows to be true about a user at that moment: role, program, department, clearance level, or operational assignment. 
• These attributes are sourced directly from your identity system via LDAP and treated as authoritative. 
• Access is not granted because someone was added to a room earlier, but because the user attributes satisfy the current policy defined for that particular room. 
• When those attributes change upstream, access changes with them.
• When a channel’s scope or sensitivity changes, access is enforced immediately. Any user who doesn’t match the attribute requirement of the room will be removed automatically. 

All ABAC-enforcement actions are logged to create an audit trail that shows who has access, under which attributes, and at what point in time.