The Unified Communications Buyer’s Guide to Security & Business Continuity

The decision to invest in new technology should never be taken lightly. From calculating ROI to anticipating and negotiating contracts and changes in infrastructure, there are a multitude of factors to consider when making the transition to a new or upgraded communication service. Yet while financial and infrastructure decisions are ultimately major factors in a company’s choice of deployment, another significant area is often overlooked—the impact that a new solution will have on your company’s security.

If you’re a business owner, executive, or IT manager, then you probably worry about security on a daily basis. Organizations in every sector now collect and generate more information than ever before, and this information can hold a tremendous amount of value. Cybercriminals are well aware of this fact and are eager to get their hands on such sensitive data, which they can use to commit identity theft or fraud.

Introduction

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01. Accept that while UC is fantastic, it still has risks.

A UC solution is all about connecting employees with one another and their customers. The unfortunate downside of this improved level of accessibility is that it potentially creates vulnerabilities. Making communication channels more readily available to authorized personnel can also make your network more accessible to hackers and other cybercriminals.

If a breach occurs, the consequences can be dire. Stolen information may be used for corporate espionage, providing your industry competitors with insight into your products and services. Even worse, a breach may lead to an investigation for regulatory noncompliance.

Then there’s the reputation damage. Consumers are extremely aware of the need to protect their data these days, and they are going to stay well away from any company that has a history of data breaches. Consequently, an unsecured UC platform can directly lead to a loss of business.

Security is at the top of many executives’ concerns-but worries can be mitigated with some planning

Beyond cybersecurity, maintaining business continuity is widely acknowledged as a priority for enterprises of all sizes and stripes. Even with business communications that are carried out across a variety of channels, the dependability of a company’s telecommunications infrastructure remains vital to an organization’s well-being. But often, disaster recovery planning places a disproportionate focus on IT resilience and maintaining the corporate data network in the event of a disaster, with scant attention to the viability of telephony systems.

Here are five steps to educating yourself on common pitfalls and achieving long-term security and stability.

Redundancy is completely necessary in order to maintain a comprehensive network that is versatile and fail-safe.

02. Know which questions to ask to avoid those risks.

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With all that said, how can a business ensure its UC platform is as secure as possible? First and foremost, you should look at potential vendors’ reputations. No two UC service providers are the same, and you need to partner with a vendor that has an established record of delivering effective, secure solutions.

But that’s not enough. You should dig deeper and ask vendors to describe in detail the nature of their security solutions. What makes their instant messaging solution safe from external threats? What about the video conferencing tool? A vendor should be ready and willing to describe precisely how its security solutions operate.

While the world’s VoIP sphere can be perceived as one giant network, in reality it is made up of many smaller, intertwined networks. Using the term “mesh” to describe the global VoIP landscape is quite accurate—many small connections create a comprehensive network that is utilized by numerous people for a multitude of purposes.

In order to counteract potential malfunctions, there must be infrastructure in place to anticipate and counteract miscues. Just as the ability to communicate globally isn’t the sole responsibility of an individual provider, the responsibility of preventing and anticipating malfunctions cannot be placed on the shoulders of one individual network. Enter the idea of globally redundant networks.

Though “redundant” is defined by Webster’s as exceeding what is necessary, this description doesn’t apply to the VoIP world. In fact, redundancy is completely necessary in order to maintain a comprehensive network that is versatile and fail-safe. Fuze has taken a variety of measures to ensure redundancy. With data centers in multiple international locations, we have a high-availability, fully redundant, multi-data center architecture that guarantees 99.999% uptime, even when one data center fails. Furthermore, our systems have disaster recovery capabilities, offering redundancy and failover capabilities that make sure our customers are available to contact and be contacted—no matter the situation.

While conventional wisdom might indicate otherwise, mobile interfaces have become robust and safe.

03. Ensure that your provider has a globally redundant network.

4. Don’t forget about mobility and remote capabilities.

05. Don’t get too comfortable.

Think that mobile connections are less secure than permanent, hard-wired access? Think again. Through the use of virtual private networks, also known as VPNs, Fuze is able to guarantee that our customers are secure, whether they’re utilizing voice or video services.

Not only does our secure online portal enable you to communicate remotely, but it also allows you to access applications— such as unified messaging—from any location. Additionally, firewall and encryption ensure that your connection is secure, regardless of whether you’re connecting from an office or remote location.

Once you’ve picked a dependable, security-conscious UC provider, you need to remain vigilant on an ongoing basis. Testing is essential in this capacity. You should regularly test your UC system to ensure that it remains up to par. Whether you do this in-house or look for third-party help, the key point is that you should never assume that the UC platform is secure.

It is imperative for customers to perform due diligence in ensuring their own security by keeping systems up to date, not divulging personal information, and having a strong password policy. Fuze’s dynamic solution ensures the best of both worlds—an innovative system that is just as secure as it is convenient. By making security a priority, your firm can take full advantage of UC solutions without putting your company at risk.

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While conventional wisdom might indicate otherwise, mobile interfaces have become robust and safe.

By making security a priority, your firm can take full advantage of UC solutions without putting your company at risk.

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Despite a catastrophic storm that ravaged much of the Eastern Seaboard STRUCTURAL did not suffer any lost calls.

The financial and operational implications of a telephone outage on business performance can be dramatic. With Fuze voice, business continuity is built-in. If a business location is inaccessible due to natural causes or significant power or internet failures, phones can be quickly and easily rerouted to designated back-up locations and out to the right devices.

Such capability proved critical to Baltimore-based specialty contracting firm STRUCTURAL, which didn’t miss a call during a once-in-a-century weather emergency. With a distributed workforce of more than 2,000 employees, deployed in 30 global locations, STRUCTURAL needed to address the shortcomings of its premises-based communications system responsible for supporting more than 850 traditional desktop phones and an additional 800+ mobile devices.

VoIP Disaster Recovery in Action

When Superstorm Sandy hit the East Coast in 2012, STRUCTURAL lost power in both of its New York locations, as well as at its corporate headquarters in Maryland. The Fuze system automatically recognized that each of these locations was offline and immediately began routing calls to designated roll-over locations, which included employees in other offices, mobile devices, and even employee softphones.

Not a single inbound call was lost. In fact, the day Sandy hit, one of STRUCTURAL’s New York based field crews was able to complete same day site inspections of storm damaged infrastructure because they were able to receive customer calls about the damage.

Our high-availability, fully redundant, multi-data center architecture allows us to guarantee service availability in the event of a data center failure. In short, regardless of the reason for failure (e.g. storm or man-made disaster), we are able to continue to provide services even if an entire data center goes offline.