In this episode we talk with Mark Ewing, Product Management Director for Google Meet, Rooms, and Voice about Google’s vision and plans for hybrid meetings. We’ll get Mark’s take on how Google is evolving their meeting device partnerships and portfolio to meet the need for equitable meetings for both in-office and remote participants and how Mark sees AI impacting meeting experiences going forward.

Vendors are quickly bringing AI and workflow automation capabilities to their platforms as part of their strategies to boost collaborative work management.

It’s not enough for a workspace platform to foster the ability to work collaboratively; it must also offer its users the ability to manage that work within the platform. Vendors are shaping their product strategies around enabling individuals and teams to work, communicate about their work and manage that work all from within one self-contained workspace.

Metrigy calls this product category “connected workspace,” and we focus on three core use cases:

Artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning, generative AI, and workflow automations are quickly becoming integral to connected workspaces, as we’ve seen in a spate of recent announcements. Examples from May and June alone include the following:

Continue reading at nojitter.com.

As digital threats loom large and regulatory requirements grow stringent, businesses are increasingly turning to advanced security solutions to safeguard their operations and customer data. Recent insights from Metrigy’s Workplace Collaboration and Contact Center Security and Compliance 2024-25 research study reveal compelling trends and challenges across three critical domains: third-party security platforms, messaging security and compliance, and contact center security.

Third-Party Security Platforms: Fortifying Organizational Resilience

Almost 35% of organizations have integrated third-party collaboration and contact center compliance and/or security platforms into their operational frameworks. Notably, 42.2% of highly successful companies utilize these platforms, underlining their role in achieving robust security and regulatory compliance.

Improving overall security remains the primary driver for adopting third-party platforms, with a notable emphasis on AI-powered monitoring capabilities. IT leaders show a clear preference for consolidated platforms offering comprehensive security features, enabling streamlined management and enhanced effectiveness.

More than 40% currently use a voice-specific security platform. The use cases for voice security platforms include customer identity management, compliance, and prevention against toll fraud.

Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) emerge as the primary sponsors of these crucial investments.

Messaging Security and Compliance: Balancing Convenience and Control

Sixty-three percent of companies permit the use of consumer chat apps like WhatsApp and Apple Messages among employees, despite inherent security risks, as well as compliance concerns for those operating within regulated organizations. However, nearly 66% of these companies actively monitor such usage, underscoring efforts to balance productivity with data protection.

Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) predominantly own responsibility for defining moderation policies for messaging platforms, aiming to mitigate potential security breaches and regulatory non-compliance. Recent incidents of security and compliance failures in the U.S. have resulted in substantial financial penalties, highlighting the critical importance of robust messaging security protocols.

Contact Center Security: Addressing Emerging Challenges

Only 39.8% of organizations have formalized contact center security programs, with remote worker and agent security emerging as primary concerns. Approximately 23.1% restrict access to specific contact center features, notably co-browsing and recording functionalities, to minimize security risks.

Businesses predominantly rely on native security features embedded within video and screen-sharing applications to ensure customer privacy during interactions. However, nearly 45% express diverse security needs specific to contact center operations, with integrations into business applications posing the most significant security challenge.

Biometric customer identification enjoys significant adoption, with nearly 35% of organizations leveraging these technologies. Despite evolving AI threats, most businesses plan to sustain and enhance biometric authentication while augmenting security with additional identification factors.

Embracing Holistic Security Strategies

As organizations navigate an increasingly complex cybersecurity landscape, the adoption of third-party security platforms, stringent messaging compliance measures, and robust contact center security frameworks emerge as pivotal strategies. By prioritizing integrated security solutions, leveraging advanced monitoring technologies, and fortifying regulatory adherence, businesses can minimize risk of evolving threats while fostering trust and resilience in their operations.

In an era where digital collaboration is the cornerstone of productivity, and attacks are increasing in frequency, ensuring the security and compliance of workplace collaboration platforms has become paramount. Metrigy’s Workplace Collaboration and Contact Center Security and Compliance 2024-25 global research study sheds light on the evolving landscape of security and compliance within organizations, offering insights into the strategies and challenges faced by modern businesses. Let’s delve into two critical aspects highlighted by the study: the role of security and compliance organizations and the formulation of workplace collaboration security strategies.

Security and Compliance Organization: Safeguarding Digital Interactions

With the rapid proliferation of collaboration applications, organizations are grappling with the challenge of maintaining robust security and compliance standards. The involvement of Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) emerges as a crucial factor, with nearly half of the participating organizations mandating CISO approval for new app deployments. This underscores a growing recognition of the significance of cybersecurity leadership in shaping technology adoption strategies.

Furthermore, the study reveals that 70.6% of organizations prioritize assessing the security of both collaboration and vendor security certifications, and 64.7% do the same for contact center apps and services. Multi-factor authentication and software development security controls emerge as the most sought-after vendor capabilities, indicating a concerted effort towards fortifying the digital infrastructure against potential threats.

Workplace Collaboration Security Strategy: Building a Foundation for Success

Despite the escalating cybersecurity threats, only 35.0% of organizations have a formal workplace collaboration security program in place. However, the study finds a positive correlation between organizational success and the presence of such programs. Successful companies are more likely to have a formal security program or one in development, underscoring the role of proactive security measures in driving business outcomes.

Remote worker security emerges as the linchpin of workplace collaboration security programs, reflecting the seismic shift towards remote work models. As organizations embrace distributed workforces, safeguarding remote access and communication channels becomes imperative to mitigate security risks effectively.

Interestingly, the study highlights that 30% of participating organizations resort to blocking access to collaboration apps and features as a security measure. Meeting recording and generative AI are the most blocked capabilities, signaling a delicate balance between enabling collaboration and mitigating potential data breaches. Often companies will block apps when they lack the means to effectively secure them or ensure compliance. Unfortunately blocking app access frequently incentivizes employees to go around IT to gain access to the capabilities that workers feel that they need, creating additional security and compliance risks and a potential loss of productivity.

Navigating the Path Forward: Embracing a Holistic Approach

Considering the findings from our study, it is evident that ensuring workplace collaboration security and compliance necessitates a holistic approach encompassing both organizational structures and strategic initiatives. Empowering CISOs to play a pivotal role in app deployment decisions and investing in robust security frameworks are crucial steps towards fortifying digital ecosystems against evolving threats.

Moreover, organizations must prioritize the formulation of formal workplace collaboration security programs, with a particular focus on remote worker security. By embracing proactive security measures and leveraging advanced technologies, businesses can navigate the complex landscape of cybersecurity with confidence, maximizing collaboration ROI without compromising on compliance and data integrity.

As companies increasingly adopt generative AI they do so with growing risk of misues, hallucinations, poisoning, and the need to ensure compliance for AI generated content. In this webinar we’ll share insights into what companies are doing today (or not doing) to address generative AI security and compliance issues and provide guidance for adoption. Attendees will learn:

Tackling GenAI Security and Compliance Issues

Presented by: Irwin Lazar, President and Principal Analyst, Metrigy

Date: July 23, 2024
Time: 11:00 am ET

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Quantum computing will drive changes in encryption and security approaches.

Quantum computing has been around for a while now, with the first prototype and commercial machines hitting the market more than a decade ago. But now, thanks to rapid advances in quantum computing approaches, the time has arrived for companies to begin to prepare for the impact of quantum computing on application encryption technologies.

What is Quantum Computing?

To understand quantum computing, we start by recalling its predecessor. Traditional computing encodes data via binary digits (bits) where each bit is encoded as a 0 or 1, and multiple bits are strung together to encode ever-more-complex data structures. However, the building block – the bit – is in one of two states. It is either in a 0 state or a 1 state. The block next to it is in a 0 state or 1 state, and it’s the sequence of eight single-state bits that comprises a byte. A different sequence of eight bits means a different byte, and the more unique eight-bit sequences required to encode data, the larger the number of bytes required.

A quantum bit, or qubit, is a bit in a quantum state. So instead of being in a 1 state or a 0 state, it can be in either. So a qubit has more storage that a classic bit, and the greater volume of information stored in that bit can exist in multiple states at the same time. This allows a quantum computer to conduct large numbers of simultaneous calculations, drastically increasing computing capability compared to binary computers. Quantum computing also offers the potential for exponential growth in processing power as more qubits are added to a quantum computer. (See Wikipedia’s quantum computing entry for a more thorough discussion of the physics of quantum computing.)

Threats to Encryption

Continue reading at nojitter.com.

If you want to maximize the incredible potential of Microsoft Teams in your contact center, you definitely don’t want to miss this new white paper from top research firm Metrigy. It’s packed with top tips and best practices from industry experts, and covers:

Get it today to unlock the game-changing potential of Microsoft Teams in your contact center.

View and download at audiocodes.com.

Ensuring 911 Location Management, Call Routing, and Incident Response Integration Minimizes Risk

Organizations have an obligation to ensure a safe working environment. This requires the ability for personnel to reach emergency services, with an expectation that first responders will be able to locate the caller quickly and accurately.

U.S. federal legislation, including Kari’s Law and RAY BAUM’s Act, have codified national requirements for processing of 911 calls and location management.

Yet today a significant percentage of companies are neither compliant nor do they understand what it means to be compliant. This creates potential risk of physical harm to personnel, as well as reputational and financial risk.

In this Metrigy issue paper exclusively from Intrado:

You’ll also get information on defining a Duty of Care standard and what you can do beyond E911 regulatory requirements to ensure you can prepare for, respond to, and recover from an emergency.

View and download at intrado.com.

While Microsoft has not publicly released a statement, by all accounts the company has blown up its Azure for Operators business.

Word of the implosion started with news reports that Microsoft let go of a large number of employees attached to Azure for Operators—these employees being from the acquisitions of Metaswitch and Affirmed Networks, both of which make up a large portion of Azure for Operators. As I’ve learned in discussions with multiple sources, it does appear that these reports are true, that the worst-case scenario of employee layoffs, as well as products’ end of life (EOL), has indeed occurred. We would expect a skeleton product support team is in place for the remainder of contract terms for the majority of clients.

For years, I was one of the sole industry analysts to cover service providers’ voice-over-IP and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) infrastructure. When Microsoft acquired Metaswitch in 2020, it didn’t make a lot of sense. Being in the operator infrastructure market, especially selling core Class 5 switch replacement solutions, is very different from selling cloud capacity or enterprise services. I was vocal about this same sort of scenario when Mitel acquired Mavenir in 2015—a decision that took only two years to break apart.

As someone who covered Metaswitch extensively for 13 years, I know service provider customers loved the company. Metaswitch’s core portfolio included Class 4/5 softswitches, gateways, application servers for consumers and businesses, and session border controllers (SBCs). It had some IMS, but the business was relatively small and not a fit with their large base of tier 2/3 wireline telcos in North America.

Metaswitch had success in penetrating tier one providers worldwide with SBCs in particular, with expansion across Europe, parts of Asia and Latin America. As network elements such as SBCs and IMS core became increasingly software-based, putting these elements in the cloud made sense. Microsoft likely envisioned a wave of opportunity, and grew its operator business through acqusitions. However, the reality is that many operators were never going to put large pieces of core switching infrastructure into public cloud environments, and that wave of opportunity never materialized.

Where does this leave Metaswitch customers?

News of unhappy Metaswitch customers is widespread, and the reverberations will be felt for years to come. It would have made sense for Microsoft to sell the business, not to recoup costs but to put its customers into steady hands. It’s possible that this may still be a way out for Microsoft, but in the absence of that, operators have a few choices.

In this episode, Metrigy’s Irwin Lazar walks us through what’s going well, and not so well, in collaboration and contact center security today, and shares tips for how to get it right. Based on Metrigy’s recently published Workplace Collaboration and Contact Center Security and Compliance: 2024-25 study.