These past two years we’ve seen a huge rise in people working from home, shopping online, and simply being more digitally connected. However, the spirit to remote working has opened new cybersecurity issues and backdoor vulnerabilities. And, while videoconferencing and messaging apps have become indispensable, many organisations are unable to use them unless they can monitor all transactions and spoken conversations. So, with business leaders needing to protect brands and people more than ever – and without excuse – what’s the way forward?

Ignorance is no excuse

15 years ago, most firms had small compliance teams and only had to worry about monitoring fixed lines and emails. And, from 2011, recording mobiles as well. Since then, we’ve seen an explosion in digital natives and the way people communicate, while legislation has tightened and will only get stronger.

Only 33% of Millennials (25-50s) and 14% among Generation Z (under 25s) prefer to deal in-person over the phone, compared to 85% of Baby Boomers (over 75s) and 77% among Generation X (51-75s) as communicated in the NTT 2020 Global CX Benchmarking Report.

Today, the only way to ensure continuous compliance is to record and monitor all business-related communications across all channels on all devices – phone, PC, laptop, tablet and mobile. Increasingly, this includes interactions over video platforms like Teams and Zoom plus messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, LINE and WeChat.

And, as firms are discovering, there are no longer any grey areas. Regulators are clamping down worldwide and only too pleased to issue substantial fines.

Security breaches on the rise

These issues have been compounded by security challenges. In March 2021, a survey of 1,200 UK businesses revealed a 20% increase in corporate security breaches since home working arrived, with the majority of problems (56%) involving private chats.

The ForgeRock Consumer Identity Breach Report from 2021 revealed attacks involving usernames and passwords increased a staggering 450% in 2020 with more than one billion compromised records in the US alone. It included details on data breaches impacting the UK, US, Germany, Australia, and Singapore; and said maintaining consumer trust and protecting digital identities were immediate mandates.

Getting technology smart

At GoRefCo we’re privileged to work with some of the brightest tech companies around. They help their clients solve such challenges every day.

Double Edge leads the way in purpose-built compliance recording solutions geared exactly to varied communication channels, workflows, and user needs. They can even securely access encrypted messaging apps. All text conversations are immediately time-stamped and safely archived, making it impossible to delete or edit them. Surveillance alerts can be set to expose potential breaches and demonstrate even stronger compliance.

Similarly, VDIPOD from Creative ITC lets employees enjoy the benefits of highly secure hybrid working through improved access to top-performing virtual desktops – from anywhere in the world, at any time, and on any device. They’re also free to decide which workloads sit where – in the cloud, on-prem, or in a hybrid model. And the self-contained platform makes it easier to enforce security policy and manage issues like software control and data sovereignty.

So, if you want sound advice, we’d be delighted to introduce you to the experts. And if you need an agency to translate the technicalities talk to us.