A blogpost by RegTech firm Cognitive View has detailed the security and compliance risks that come with using video communication tools while working remotely.
The blogpost highlighted that since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, many companies have had to move quickly to a remote-based schedule and subsequently attune themselves to using video communication tools.
While this has provided opportunities for employees to work more flexibly and for companies to hire more workers regardless of geographical location, it is become clearer that using video-based tools from remote locations may pose security and compliance challenges.
Cognitive View said, “The explosion of unified communications tools and platforms such as video calling and collaboration chat – where documents, files, and multimedia content are also easily shared – exposed businesses to greatly increased risks of inappropriate data disclosure, from personally identifying information to intellectual property. The very nature and the range of exciting possibilities that video communication software and collaboration platforms offer make them vulnerable to a privacy breach.
“From the sharing of confidential information via screen sharing, file-sharing through chat, or virtual white-boarding, to the conversation itself — even having documents or information displayed on a whiteboard in the background visible via the webcam — there are a variety of security loopholes for confidential corporate data to slip through, cause compliance risks or result in misconduct.”
According to the company, video communication can expose its users to sensitive information leakage, where a screen-sharing feature can show parts of presenters’ screens that they did not intend to share, leading to the potential leaking of emails or passwords.
Additionally, it can lead to unauthorised access. This can commonly occur when meeting information is made open to the public. Following this, a user could post a private meeting link on social media, share their virtual classroom information and more. While most video collaboration platforms now support password protection and waiting room features, this can still not completely prevent unauthorised people from entering a meeting.
The third example of the dangers of video communication tools is inappropriate conduct and company policy adherence. Cognitive View claimed that maintaining decent workplace behaviours is challenging in a model where the workforce is distributed and not in a single physical place – creating challenges in enforcing company policies around acceptable behaviour and oversight necessary for the governance.
The company underlined that for firms to ensure compliance with policies, contain data loss and maintain conduct, it was essential to protect your data while also strengthening your Firewalls and VPN.
Cognitive View detailed that its video analysis technology that uses machine learning is able to analyse video from a number of collaboration channels, and supports the detection of sensitive data leakage, company policy enforcement for collaboration security and compliance, remediation and alert for a breach and redaction capabilities for sensitive data.
The blogpost can be read in full here.
Copyright © 2021 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
