Time for Collaboration Pros to Go Deeper on Cybersecurity

September 19, 2024

Written by Eric Krapf, General Manager and Program Co-Chair, Enterprise Connect Publisher

As collaboration platforms acquire features such as the ability to create call transcripts and summaries, and to integrate more tightly with other productivity and line of business apps, the security implications have become more urgent. Increasingly, all collaboration apps—whether using voice, video, text, or a combination--produce corporate data at a furious rate. And that data has to be protected and handled correctly.

Comms/collab/CX pros have been aware of their heightened responsibilities around compliance for some time. When enterprise-grade instant messaging hit in the early 2010s with the likes of Skype and Jabber, IT leaders had to reckon with the fact that these text-based communications were legally discoverable and needed to be archived appropriately. Now that most internal corporate meetings happen on collaboration platforms where a call can be recorded with the press of a button (often by anyone on the call), enterprises have had to begin raising awareness on when and how recording must be handled.

In a sense, compliance or governance are the “what,” and security is the “how.” Enterprises have to make sure that corporate data—including that generated by collaboration systems—is handled properly. And by definition, a hacker who accesses that data intends to do just the opposite. So comms/collab/CX leaders need to raise their game when it comes to cybersecurity—they must understand how to achieve compliance in a world where all corporate data is potentially at risk.

The conventional wisdom over the past few years has been that collaboration pros were at best siloed if not disconnected from the CISO organization. Anecdotally, I’ve been hearing more comms/collab people say they have more interaction with the security team than they used to, and there clearly seems to be an appetite to make the comms/collab/CX organization more cybersecurity-aware.

No wonder we’re getting more demand for security-related content at Enterprise Connect. And for Enterprise Connect 2025 next March, we’ll be responding in a big way. We’re in the process of building our largest Security/Compliance track ever, and we’ll be offering a half-day training on security for enterprise comms/collab/CX pros.

Our aim is to arm collaboration pros with a clear understanding, in detail, of the key principles of cybersecurity, and how they apply to the elements of the enterprise estate that provide communications, collaboration, and CX capabilities. We want to help you protect the hardware, software, and data that your team manages day in and day out.

To get a preview of the kind of knowledge we’re planning to share, check out this No Jitter post by Scott Murphy of Data Perceptions, a Toronto-based consultancy with a heavy security focus. Data Perceptions will be delivering our half-day security training in Orlando next March, and Scott’s article touches on just a few of the concepts that will be included.

And yes, we are in full planning mode for Enterprise Connect 2025. The event will take place March 17 – 20, 2025 at the Gaylord Palms hotel in Orlando, FL. We’ll be launching the program and registration soon after next month’s Enterprise Connect AI event closes. Speaking of which, there’s still time to register for Enterprise Connect AI – we’d love to see you in Santa Clara, CA, Oct. 1 – 2!