As the trends of the communication and collaboration industry continue to evolve, there’s one thing that will always remain crucial for today’s business leaders: security and compliance.
While businesses have always prioritized the security of their organisations, data, and customers, the demand for better standards in privacy and protection has grown in recent years. We’ve seen the evidence of increased demand for security in everything from the introduction of GDPR to the arrival of new standards for data management worldwide.
As the landscape continues to change, bringing with it more mobile workers, distributed teams, and updated communication platforms, questions around compliance and privacy are evolving. Companies are under greater pressure than ever to keep their teams and clients secure in a transformational landscape.
To find out where this space is going, we reached out to leaders from innovative companies like Unify Square and Verint. Here’s what they had to say about Security and Compliance 2021.
What are the Most Significant Customer Trends from 2020?
To understand where the security and compliance space is heading, we need to fully grasp where it is today. Right now, communication and collaboration landscapes are in a state of significant transformation, with around 90% of organisations involved in some kind of migration towards new technology. Unfortunately, while access to new technology unlocks opportunities, it also presents significant challenges too.
Switching into a new landscape, like one for remote working in the age of COVID-19, or one that focuses heavily on tools for collaboration and video conferencing, means addressing new security and compliance issues.
Scott Gode, Chief Product Marketing Officer at Unify Square:
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Scott Gode[/caption]
According to the Chief Product Marketing Officer for Unify Square, Scott Gode, data security, particularly regarding collaboration platforms, is the number one item on the list of Enterprise priorities right now. This is particularly essential at a time when the workforce is becoming increasingly remote and hybrid.
When it comes to ensuring collaboration security, Scott says that a few significant customer trends stand out. First, there’s an aggressive migration to and adoption of SaaS platforms. Secondly, companies are dealing more aggressively with shadow IT deployments, and “lightly managed” IT touch on various workloads. “This results in multiple platforms in use per organization covering the same workload.”
Finally, the third trend is a fast-tracked evolution in security trust models like MFA and VPN split tunnelling.
Phil Fry, Vice President of Financial Compliance at Verint:
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Phil Fry [/caption]
Phil Fry, the VP of Financial Compliance for Verint said that clearly, 2020 hasn’t been a normal year. The pandemic has forced us to change how we operate, particularly as the workforce switches to working from home. This creates various issues. For instance, there are new cultural challenges to consider due to people working in unfamiliar surroundings.
Secondly, there are technical and managerial concerns associated with equipping employees to work safely, effectively, and securely wherever they are. This year has significantly accelerated the trends already underway in the workplace. Chief among these is the increased adoption of collaboration and UC tools, such as Microsoft Teams. These tools help close some of the distance caused by remote working with video, screen sharing, and instant chat.
“This in turn has prompted a move towards cloud-based communication and data management solutions, but also creates a critical “compliance gap” for regulated businesses required to capture and store electronic communications.”
What Will Be the Top Challenges Facing End Customers in 2021?
In 2021, as the demands on businesses continue to evolve, there’s no doubt that we’ll continue to discover new challenges that brands need to overcome in security and compliance. Although we’re already in a period of transformation now, the new year is likely to focus on the ongoing strategies that companies will need to put in place after the COVID-19 pandemic.
We asked our industry leaders what they think the biggest challenges will be facing end-customers in the year to come.
Unify Square’s Scott Gode said that in the UC and Collaboration world, complex challenges from 2020 are likely to flow into 2021. This includes the challenge of enabling users to collaborate securely from anywhere, while protecting data from misuse. There’s also the challenge of governance confusion to consider. “Configuration drift and misconfiguration of workload settings increases data risk and issues with governance structures.”
Scott noted that cloud speed to security posture mismatches will be an issue too. SaaS enables agility and speed, but out-of-the-box settings haven’t caught up with enterprise needs for risk and security management. Employee security awareness will be another issue to address, as companies strive to avoid the over-sharing of data and excessive privileges, combined with limited training available during the work-from-home shift.
Even home network and UC workload support could be a challenge, as users will need 24/7 operational lifecycle support, as well as work/life balance support too. “While not directly a security issue, the WFH culture creates added stress…and stress can translate to lack of focus and/or unintentional negligence.”
Phil Fry of Verint said that given the trends towards increasing adoption of UC for support of remote working, it’s likely that 2021 will be a year of consolidation and stabilisation for most businesses.
