For online collaboration to take place effectively, you need both a smooth and frictionless user experience, and a secure environment for the sharing of data, ideas and communications to take place. So it’s not surprising that Cisco, the collaboration partner for 95% of the Fortune 500, and also a leading cybersecurity brand, was recently recognised as leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Meeting Solutions.
We spoke with Niraj Gopal, Head of Webex Product Management for Security and Manageability, about the latest updates and why they are so important for the future of work and online collaboration – and how this update is an opportunity for Cisco to flex their security strength and demonstrate its centrality to the whole brand.
“The security landscape is always changing, but data loss still happens in two main ways: either via a malicious attack, a deliberate and intentional breach, or it happens accidentally through user error”
Free to safely share…
The challenge is that collaboration is all about sharing, and people need to be able to share
their most sensitive information to work together – intellectual property, personal data, product announcements… And increasingly today people need to collaborate securely across different teams and organisations too.
“We built the Webex solution from the ground up for secure external communication, driven by unique user authentication – and deploying the unique Cloudlock CASB supporting Data Loss Prevention policies for each user’s company, within the shared collaboration space”, Gopal continued.
And encryption is fundamental to the solution, with all data encrypted end-to-end, in transit, in use, and at rest. Cisco never decrypts the data, and the user hosts their private keys on-premises – no one else can decrypt it, even if it were breached. So, don’t lose your keys! We are reminded that “with great power comes great responsibility!”
Other features of the security pack include Cisco Cloud Lock, which actively prevents sharing of data and documents in breach of user-defined parameters, such as data containing credit card numbers. Gopal explained, “Cloud Lock will scan every single message or file, and if it breaches your policy it will detect it and delete it, and immediately notify you of the violation. There are 80+ predefined vertical policies, such as those for education or healthcare, scanning for different kinds of sensitive data”.
Sharing within the rules
GDPR compliance is also fully integrated, with built-in subject access request and delete request tools, and for users who run Cisco apps on their own devices there are new security controls too:
“Built-in mobile application management capabilities, so the user or info security colleague can force a logout on a lost device, or remote-wipe only the Cisco data”. And administrators can set minimum standards, such as pin lock being in place, for the application to be usable in the first place, and ensure that any files shared are scanned with the latest Cisco Talos antivirus at the point of upload. “If someone is using their own laptop, for example, or from outside of your organisation, you don’t know if their antivirus is up to date – but if you need to collaborate with them, Cisco will scan that file and make certain it’s clean before you and your employees can download it”, Gopal concluded.
“We’re putting the whole secure collaboration system in one box”
