Are Cloud-Based Contact Center Solutions Safe For Your Business?
According to a study by Ponemon, the average cost of a data breach in 2016 reached $4 million. If data breaches were rare, this would seem a small price to some companies. But the study also found that chances of a data breach exceeding 10 thousand records was an astounding 26%. You can't afford not to protect your customers and your company from security data breaches. Even big companies like Sony, Anthem, and JP Morgan among many others were vulnerable, and have recently struggled with major data breaches.
With bad actors becoming ever more sophisticated and prevalent, all parts of your organization need to be secure, but none likely more so than your customer facing operations like your contact center solution. Security issues on the frontlines could put sensitive customer information like credit card, social security numbers, health records, and more at risk, and put you in the news for the wrong reasons.
Are Cloud-Based Contact Center Solutions Secure? YES!
A common myth is that in-house systems are more secure because data is stored in-house vs. in the cloud. However, if you look at the nature of many breaches, most have occurred from unauthorized hacking/tampering with in-house systems. Moreover, a recent CCNG study showed that executives in organizations using in-house solutions felt security was of greater concern than cloud-based.
Encryption protocols and security processes are extremely strong in cloud-based solutions, and can provide higher levels of security. With this said, it should come as no surprise the same study found that 70% of organizations with in-house operations plan to move to the cloud. This number is further confirmed by recent growth figures for the cloud contact center industry, which are projected to nearly triple by 2020.
While the data and trends are encouraging, sometimes one must see it to believe it. Arise Virtual Solutions is an award-winning industry leader when it comes to the cloud, recently recognized by the Outsourcing Institute for Excellence in Best Practices Thought Leadership. Arise provides a secure cloud-based platform-as-a-service to serve as a client’s contact center solution.
Case Study: An Enterprise Focused on Data Security
In a contact center function, organizations must protect against both vulnerabilities in technology as well as bad actors among those who use the technology. Arise understands the concern for both and the potential damage that data breaches can have on customers, reputation, and the bottom line. For this reason, data security is a top priority and systems are in place to protect personally identifiable data and your company.
Arise security starts with the micro call centers and their agents who use the platform. Before anyone can service on the Arise platform, they must first pass a rigorous 7-year background check and extensive certification process. Moreover, Arise platform users comprise a more mature and risk-averse demographic than that found through traditional call center solutions. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data shows crime propensity of the Arise demographic is 65% lower than traditional solutions.
From a technology perspective, the Arise platform is a virtual Fort Knox leveraging round-the-clock monitoring, multifactor authentication via a SSL VPN connection, and detection/prevention technologies with Palo Alto Next-Generation firewalls updated daily to account for any new exploits. Platform users interact with the platform and client systems through a proprietary virtualized desktop which renders the user’s hard drive non-functional and disables mounting of removable drives, printers, scanners, and any copy/paste functions. All call recordings are transmitted and stored in AES256 encryption in a secure data center.
Cloud Based Wins
In short, maintaining the highest security protocols is a rightful concern of any organization, but with a customer contact operation, the data shows going cloud-based can be more secure than an in-house, traditional call center solution. When you add additional processes, technologies, and safeguards in place, cloud-based goes from a nice-to-have to a necessity.
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