Trends in UC&C, Essential Differentiators Between Platforms, and the Critical Role of Security

This week’s episode of the Futurum Tech Webcast – Interview Series, featured an interview with Cisco’s Niraj Gopal. Niraj is the Director of Project Management for Webex Enterprise Security and Compliance and “owns” the 360 degree approach to Webex security, which spans so many things. In our conversation today we explored trends in online collaboration and communications platforms, some key differentiators between platforms, how COVID-19 has changed the way we work (and live), and what’s going on in the enterprise leaders’ minds as it relates to the security afforded by these platforms. Niraj is responsible for all things related to enterprise security and compliance at Webex, including identity management, end-to-end encryption of customer content, Data Loss Prevention, the DPL/CASB partner ecosystem, mobile device security, third party platform certifications, and security policy controls in Control Hub. With more than 20 years of experience in enterprise security management, the creator of a number of innovative products, and the holder of 7 patents (and counting), he’s a self-described fanatic when it comes to solving customer problems. That’s probably why we get along so well — I’m a bit of a fanatic about that myself. Our conversation revolved around some primary research our team at Futurum recently published, in partnership with Cisco: Unified Communications & Collaboration, the Essential Differentiators for 2020 and Beyond and Unified Communications & Collaboration, the Primacy of Security, Privacy and Trust. We discussed: Trends in online collaboration since COVID-19 changed the way we work, including security issues. In spite of a lot of news about security breaches of online meeting platforms, we don’t hear about that much as it relates to Webex. What is Cisco doing differently? Besides what users can do to protect their own data, thoughts on what IT and security admins can do to make sure that data doesn’t get breached, especially in persistent messaging. What vendors can do to help prevent and protect against data breaches. How work from home has changed the workload for IT admins, and what they can do to ensure the safety of devices being used by remote employees. How visibility and control when users collaborate outside of their company is a critical part of data protection initiatives. How E2E encryption safeguards meetings and why that’s more important today than ever before. The evolving role of collaboration platforms in healthcare and what’s involved in delivering telehealth services remotely. We wrapped up our conversation with a discussion about what’s next on the roadmap for collaboration security. Niraj brought a wealth of knowledge to the conversation around not only trends in UC&C, how vendors and platforms differ and why understanding those differentiators are important for enterprise leaders charged with making decisions around UC&C platforms and, last but never least, the role that security plays in all of this today and what to know and look for. And if you’re interested in a deeper dive on either UC&C trends and differentiators you need to know about and/or security as it relates to UC&C platforms, you can download our research reports here: Unified Communications & Collaboration, the Essential Differentiators for 2020 and Beyond Unified Communications & Collaboration, the Primacy of Security, Privacy and Trust