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Why this exists

The day the usual tools stop helping​

A ransomware attack does not only stop production. It stops the things you manage production with.

Email is encrypted — or worse, it works, and the attacker reads everything. The network share holding the continuity plan is unreachable. The corporate directory is down, and with it the only list of mobile numbers. The on-call spreadsheet was on that share.

In the overwhelming majority of organisations, the crisis team then falls back on a WhatsApp group, a spreadsheet and an email thread. It works — it is even the only thing that works — but nothing is structured, nothing is searchable, and six months later, when the insurer or the regulator asks what was decided and when, all that remains is a chat log.

Kastell's starting point​

The crisis tool must owe nothing to the information system it is rescuing.

That is not a slogan: it is a constraint that costs something, and it is held throughout the product.

  • No authentication through the corporate directory. You create Kastell accounts, with a second factor, independent of your IS.
  • Personal contact details live in the preparedness dossier. On the day, the work number does not answer.
  • The dossier stays readable offline and printable. What is on paper survives everything, including Kastell itself.
  • SMS and voice calls remain the first-rank call-out channels. They depend on no prior installation.

The other half: being able to say what happened​

A crisis is argued afterwards. In front of an insurer, a regulator, a court, sometimes an employee. The questions are always the same:

  • When did you know?
  • Who decided what, on what information?
  • Why did you wait before notifying?

A record that can be edited after the fact answers none of them — because nothing rules out that it was edited. That is why the heart of Kastell is not the chat or the video, but the log.

What Kastell is not

It is neither an international mass-notification platform, nor business continuity software, nor an IT on-call tool. Those markets have their products, and good ones. Kastell makes a crisis team work, and keeps the record of what it did.