As companies across the U.S. have fully embraced remote working solutions, video-teleconferencing (VTC) platforms are now the virtual office must-have. These tools allow face-to-face video conferences between users in different cities, states, countries and even continents. For employees in a mandated work-from-home environment, they offer the next best thing to actually being in a room together.
The growth of VTC hijacking
Although these meeting-only solutions can facilitate great discussions, many of them lack the more complex security features businesses require. In particular, teleconferences are vulnerable to verbal abuse and disturbing images by outsiders. Known as “VTC hijacking” or “bombing”, these incidences have skyrocketed over the past few months—leading the FBI to issue a warning. The FBI also released a tip sheet that offered the following advice for users:
- Keep meetings private by issuing users a password or employing the “waiting room” function, which requires the host to invite each guest individually.
- Don’t share invitation links on social media.
- Stay on top of any software security patches provided by VTC companies.
Integrated UC for more secure meetings
While simple steps go a long way to protect video conferences from intrusions, the surest way to secure real-time video meetings is to use an integrated collaboration platform with end-to-end encryption. A cloud-based Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) solution that encompasses secure, high-quality video, audio/web conferencing and advanced communication features can also integrate with third-party collaboration tools—such as Microsoft Teams and Slack—as well as other widely used business applications.
Additionally, an optional, fully integrated Contact Center Services platform can queue calls and chats, while enabling contact center managers to view live and historical agent and queue activity to help manage employee performance. This approach can streamline workflows and enhance employee productivity—all while maximizing existing solutions and technology investments.
OfficeSuite HD: the features employees want, the security IT needs
To protect your meeting environment, OfficeSuite HD Meeting® comes with built-in security at both the platform and web services levels. OfficeSuite HD Meeting web services reside in redundant Amazon Web Services (AWS) environments to isolate your data from other computing resources. Additionally, Windstream Enterprise privacy policies protect data that traverses the cloud through multiple means, including AES 256-bit encryption and private MPLS network connections to AWS. We also provide a full suite of security tools that can be configured at the customer level to enable compliance and create secure meeting environments.
