NewsUC&C15 Oct 2024 · 3 min read

Theta Lake Uncovers Almost Every Business Has Security Anxiety About Gen AI In UC

Research by Theta Lake has found that almost every enterprise canvassed is nervous about deploying generative AI technologies in unified communications…

James Stephen

Theta Lake survey on Gen AI security anxiety

Research by Theta Lake has found that almost every enterprise canvassed is nervous about deploying generative AI technologies in unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) due to the potential security vulnerabilities it may create.

With "record-breaking" regulatory fines totalling over $4 billion being issued to more than 70 businesses this year for infractions relating to communication capture, recordkeeping, and supervision, companies are evidently cautious of relying on relatively new and unknown technologies like generative AI.

The AI-powered communication and compliance vendor’s sixth annual Digital Communication Governance, Archiving, Compliance and Security Report revealed that 97 percent of respondents shared their anxieties about using generative AI capabilities for UCC and Digital Communications Governance and Archiving (DCGA).

Devin Redmond, Co-Founder and CEO of Theta Lake, commented on the report: “GenAI is certainly top-of-mind, and the multiple areas of concern respondents noted highlight that."

Although AI is a hot topic, it’s clear much of the concern revolves around the potential for risks versus actual risks from any broadscale usage."

“Our report makes it equally clear that the modern digital workplace is in full effect with both a broadening and deepening in the use of cloud-based and meshed, multi-channel communication and collaboration tools."

“Organisations are also feeling the pain of non-unified archiving and voice recording tools that make capture, archiving, reconciliation, supervision, and surveillance harder than ever before."

Redmond continued: “With Theta Lake, organisations can address that pain and reduce off-channel communications, increase coverage of workplace UCC, reduce the total cost of ownership of archiving, and meaningfully improve compliance outcomes.”

Key Findings

The survey pointed to a number of challenges facing organisations, particularly relating to compliance issues, but also the increasing popularity of cloud UCC solutions.

The report found, for example, that 85 percent of those using four or more and seven or more collaboration tools have doubled this year to more than one-third.

However, most firms (58 percent) are concerned with the current record capture, record keeping, and reconciliation solutions they have in place across their UCC tools.

Furthermore, 43 percent said they were worried about the compliance problems that could come from summarisation and note-taking tools.

These fears are spilling out to affect the uptake of generative AI, with 53 percent viewing providing AI tools and LLMs that have access to sensitive information as being the ‘greatest risk’.

Sticking with existing solutions is clearly not the answer either, as not only would this mean foregoing the extensive benefits that generative AI technologies have demonstrated over recent years, such as increased productivity, reduced manual tasks, and a healthier bottom line, the report demonstrates that sticking with the status quo isn’t really an option either.

According to Theta Lake, traditional recording solutions, which were designed for phone calls and emails, are "struggling to adapt" to the audio, text, and visual communications of modern UCC platforms.

Irwin Lazar, President and Principal Analyst, Metrigy, agrees that enterprises need to take action to find effective compliance solutions: "Metrigy's research shows that as new collaboration applications and features rapidly enter the market, most regulated companies struggle with compliance."

“This leads to almost half of regulated organisations choosing to block apps or features, limiting collaboration effectiveness."

Given the large number of fines for failure to properly capture, archive, supervise, and surveil communications in industries such as financial services, it is clear companies need to take a proactive approach toward modernising their compliance capabilities."

“That includes deploying DCGA solutions like Theta Lake to support a broad range of collaboration capabilities, including generative AI."

Theta Lake points to its own "unified approach" to DCGA as being able to simultaneously address the cost, data, and efficiency of traditional archives and voice recording solutions.

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