VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4 | Q4 2022 | rwsmagazine.com Sponsored by What Your Teams Are Doing on Teams Battling BYOD FOUR-DAY WEEK WORKING SaaS UNDER ATTACK
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8 14 21 30 18 CONTENTS VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4 | Q4 REMOTE SECURITY 8 SaaS Under Attack The sneaky underworld of SaaS penetration By Brady Hicks 12 Adding Power to PAM Privileged identity sprawl puts organizations at risk By Bruce Christian REMOTE INTELLIGENCE 14 What Your Teams Are Doing on Teams The rewards and risks of collaboration solution user behavior By Martin Vilaboy 18 CAI + NLU = Better CX The importance of automation and AI in customer contact By Bruce Christian 21 Business VoIP Simplified A new fixed cost option from BTI By Del Williams REMOTE CONTROL 24 Controlling SaaS Overspend By Martin Vilaboy 26 Battling BYOD Advice to minimize the risks of using employee personal devices for work By Bruce Christian REMOTE RESOURCES 30 Four-Day Workweek Leads to Full Week of Productivity By Martin Vilaboy 32 Getting Satisfaction Employers must Continue to battle ‘quiet quitting,’ burnout By Bruce Christian REMOTE PREMISES 38 Meet the RV with a ‘Corner Office’ By Martin Vilaboy 40 Smarter Spaces Collaboration technologies essential to optimizing offices, remote employees for hybrid work By Kevin Schroll 6 Letter from the editor 42 Advertiser index 42 Contact RWS 4 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
Martin Vilaboy Editor-in-Chief martin@bekabusinessmedia.com Bruce Christian Senior Editor bruce@bekabusinessmedia.com Brady Hicks Contributing Editor brady@bekabusinessmedia.com Percy Zamora Art Director percy@bekabusinessmedia.com Rob Schubel Digital Manager rob@bekabusinessmedia.com Jennifer Vilaboy Production Manager jen@bekabusinessmedia.com Berge Kaprelian Group Publisher berge@bekabusinessmedia.com (480) 503-0770 Anthony Graffeo Publisher anthony@bekabusinessmedia.com (203) 304-8547 Beka Business Media Berge Kaprelian President and CEO Corporate Headquarters 10115 E Bell Road, Suite 107 - #517 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 Voice: 480.503.0770 Email: berge@bekabusinessmedia.com © 2022 Beka Business Media, All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in any form or medium without express written permission of Beka Business Media is prohibited. RWS and the RWS logo are trademarks of Beka Business Media Shortly after adoption of Microsoft Teams and other cloud collaboration platforms exploded to accommodate newly dispersed workforces, meeting frequency was highlighted as a potential downside to working from home. After Microsoft reported on the unprecedented growth in Teams minutes-of-use, we heard about the possibility of digital communications “fatigue” among heavy UCaaS users. As it turns out, inactivity on the platformsmay be a bigger problem than any overuse. In the cover story this issue (see page 14), we point out how UCaaS platform users mostly have been utilizing the more legacy types of communications features found on MS Teams (such as emails, calls and chats), while newer “digital teaming” types of functionalities (document and storage sharing, group channels and app integration) are being underutilized. An extensive analysis by Swoop Analytics also showed that workers experiencing back-to-back meetings are very much in the minority. More than 70 percent of staff had less than one meeting every two days, while only a sliver was having meetings every hour of the day. Looking deeper into activity levels on digital team spaces, meanwhile, Swoop Analytics found that a common characteristic of digital collaboration platforms is a high proportion of largely inactive shared spaces. On average, the percentage of active teams during a three-month benchmarking period was 26 percent, meaning the vast majority of team spaces that are created eventually become dormant. Things weren’t much better among the cohort of power users of Teams. In some ways, the large amount of dormant team spaces is not surprising, Swoop researchers point out. It’s not uncommon for a space to be created for every project, large or small, and left up for future reference. Shared spaces also can be required for certain recurrent events or end-of-period reporting. “For the majority of organizations, the creation of a team on Teams is largely unconstrained,” said the collaboration analytics firm. “Leaving team creation and growth to organic processes is seen as consistent with appropriate use of modern digital platforms, due to the low cost of hosting collaboration spaces.” Storage is cheap, after all, so it’s hardly worth the resources to manage this tail of inactive teams. Better to concentrate on those that are working. On the other hand, a failure of governance, and “the long tail” of inactive spaces, argued the Swoop Analytics report, “represents digital noise that can impact on the effective use of the platform and security risks if guests can still access resources beyond their active participation.” That’s not to suggest that organizations should shift resources to a culling of dormant digital workspaces, albeit a growing concern. More to the point is how inactivity levels on collaboration platforms re-emphasize the reality that organizational adoption is only the first step to driving a return on IT investments. Consider for example that of the nearly 100,000 digital teams across 33 organizations accessed for the Swoop Analytics benchmarking analysis, less than 3 percent had sufficient “active membership” to be included in a more detailed analysis of team space activity levels. The ‘Long Tail’ of Inactive Teams 6 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
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By Brady Hicks SaaS Under Attack The sneaky underworld of SaaS penetration SECURITY Every day, legitimate bad actors are finding new ways to infiltrate operations, steal critical data and prey on the mistakes made by a remote workforce. Traditionally, these attacks often have come by luring users to log into a spoofed site and stealing their credentials. Most often, threat actors sought to gain user trust by appearing as a link in one’s email from a seemingly legitimate source, whether an established business or a trusted contact. Sometimes they include nonsensical threats. Other times, it’s more of a numbers game. Now, according to new data published by Palo Alto Networks, a new method of fostering trust has emerged that is far more sinister – and difficult to detect. Cybercriminals are now targeting SaaS (software as a service) platforms, which are otherwise used in an official capacity, to host their own deceptive phishing scams. With this tactic, the victim is conned into believing he or she is logging into a legitimate interface, as it totally appears to be one. The phishing page is posted on the authentic platform and can take the form of everything from website builders to form generators to blogs and other communications software. All to the tune of a 1,100 percent increase in attacks over the single-year period from June 2021 to June 2022. 8 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
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Why SaaS? By its nature, a SaaS environment is designed to provide a low- or no-code experience for its users. Unfortunately, this also allows malicious actors to more easily copy and modify pages to use for their own means. With minimal effort, the cybercriminal can create a spoofed page to collect user logins and sensitive information. And, because it resides on an existing, trusted domain, it is better at (a) luring users and (b) evading detection. It’s been so effective, in fact, that Palo Alto observed a “significant” jump in “platform-abuse phishing URLs” since the onset of 2020. Coincidentally, this coincides with the sweeping work-fromhome changes instituted due to COVID-19 quarantining. And, despite a slight lull last holiday season, the trend has been surging since February 2022. Common Targets Attacks ballooned from 2,000 per month (April 2022) to nearly 7,000 (June 2022). These assaults occurred almost regardless of SaaS platform use case and have been growing in frequency since the second half of 2021. Palo Alto detailed the most commonly observed attacks as: Personal Branding, which is used primarily to list personal social media, professional sites and portfolios. According to research presented by email security provider Cofense, attackers use these types of platforms because they present a more difficult obstacle toward identifying hosted dangers, especially versus those offered by the top cloud providers. Essentially, they work because they tend to remain undetected – and thus live – online for longer periods of time. Palo Alto noted nearly five existing URLs that were targeted by attacks, per week, over the period studied. Design/Prototyping, for drafting and trialing various web elements. Four attacks per week were observed through the course of the study. Note-Taking/Collaboration, assisting detailed logs, other documents and dashboard creation. Palo Alto recorded just more than three strikes per week in this area. Website Building, which uses a low- or no-code environment to help quickly generate websites. Two attacks per week were noted. Form Building, for creating custom forms and surveys. This area accounted for slightly more than one attack per week. File Sharing, which assists with file hosting and collaboration. Palo Alto logged approximately one attack every other week. The Takeaway Today’s businesses – especially those with a remote or hybrid workforce – need to be more judicious in monitoring SaaS activity. They should also be better equipped with advanced URL filtering and other cybersecurity options for detecting and eliminating these scams before they can do damage. You can no longer trust a URL just because you recognize the domain or platform behind it. That’s the downside to low- and no-code environments: intricate phishing scams can be implemented just as easily as legitimate tasks. And, more troublingly, most conventional cybersecurity techniques tend to miss them. Palo Alto recommends a hybrid approach to fighting these types of attacks, including: • Promoting awareness regarding credentials theft. • Flagging and confirming legitimacy for any request for login. • Being wary of recommendations for urgent or timely action. • Visiting sites directly rather than following links. • Employing URL filtering, with machine learning, to examine web content in detail. • Removing suspicious activity immediately when detected. J In other words, be careful. This trend isn’t likely to go away. SECURITY Which activities are the most time-consuming? Number of Newly Discovered Phishing. URLs Hosted on Legitimate SaaS Platforms per Week Source: Palo Alto Networks 8000 6000 2020-04-01 2020-07-01 2020-10-01 2021-01-01 2021-04-01 2021-07-01 2021-10-01 2022-01-01 2022-04-01 4000 2000 0 Num. URLs (10-week Moving Average) Percentage of all Newly Discovered Phishing URLs Found Being H sted on Legitimages SaaS Platforms Source: Palo Alto Networks 8000 6000 2020-04-01 2020-07-01 2020-10-01 2021-01-01 2021-04-01 2021-07-01 2021-10-01 2022-01-01 2022-04-01 4000 2000 0 Pct. Phishing URLs (10-week Moving Avg.) Routine or mundane administrative tasks Routine or mundane customer interactions Trying to find the answer or information Training 26% 34% 18% 14% 17% 14% 17% 17% 8% 10 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
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As most of today’s corporate desk employees work in remote or hybrid environments, organizations now have more “privileged” users – someone who is authorized to perform security-relevant functions that ordinary users are not authorized to perform – than ever, allowing teammembers such as engineers, IT personnel and DevSecOps staff to access sensitive resources and to work with elevated permissions over a remote connection. Because of this, remote desktop protocol (RDP) plays a larger role in organizations as network administrators must diagnose remotely any IT problems that workers encounter. The employer also must allow these administrators remote access to other employees’ and their own physical work desktop computers. Unfortunately, while it’s a necessity in a remote environment, RDP also creates vulnerabilities. RDP is a tool used largely to connect to Windows systems remotely across a domain. Outside its use as a legitimate access utility, it’s also used by attackers to use compromised credentials to access other systems. This is what is referred to as “lateral movement.” An attacker will evaluate where compromised credentials exist and gain access through RDP to log into other systems as an administrator to extend their reach across the network. “Lateral movement is a technique used by attackers to propagate within an environment,” said Raj Dodhiawala, president and CEO of Remediant. “It enables them to extend their footprint within a network, which leads to further compromise and ultimately a full-scale breach.” Depending on their target, “this might mean data compromise, reputational damage, source code loss, among other outcomes,” he added. Dodhiawala has more than 30 years of experience in enterprise software and cybersecurity, primarily focused on bringing disruptive enterprise products to new markets. With an estimated 36.2 million U.S. employees expected to be working remotely by 2025, according to career expert company Zippia, the chances of attacks increase, and that in turn could result in even more privileged users. Dodhiawala acknowledged that when more privileged users have access to a company’s sensitive data and resources, the risk of an attacker compromising these privileges and reaching a company’s sensitive resources grows. According to a data breach intelligence report by Verizon, more than 80 percent of successful attacks used privileged credentials, yet many feel their admin access is protected by using legacy privileged access management (PAM) solutions. In fact, large investments are made in these solutions. But Dodhiawala warned that legacy PAM isn’t enough to address privileged identity sprawl and the large attack surface at organizations that bad actors exploit to Adding Power to PAM SECURITY By Bruce Christian Privileged identity sprawl puts organizations at risk 12 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
gain access to admin credentials, move laterally across their system and capture an organizations’ most valuable data and IP. “If there is an abundance of privileged access within an environment, an attacker can more easily move around the network by reusing privileged access,” Dodhiawala explained. “This reduces the complexity of the requisite attack and enables them to more deftly and quietly navigate the network, allowing lateral movement until attackers find the ‘crown jewels.’” Combatting the threat “Companies should minimize their privilege landscape by taking a zero-trust aligned ‘least privileges’ mindset. This means removing administrator access wherever and whenever possible to reduce the potential blast radius of an attack,” Dodhiawala explained. “Companies can do so by taking a zero-standing privileges approach, essentially removing admin from endpoints, only re-adding them for the minimum time and place they’re needed, also known as PAM+.” Remediant recently released its trademarked Remediant PAM+ solution during the 2022 Gartner Identity & Access Management Summit in Las Vegas. A just-in-time infrastructure is an admin-less one, Dodhiawala said, explaining, “If you pursue a goal of zero standing privilege (or zero admin), when an attacker lands on an endpoint, there are no administrator accounts to compromise. This leaves them largely trapped on their initial breach point and limits the blast radius until they can be eradicated by a blue team. It turns a boom into a blip.” Remediant calls PAM+ an emerging industry strategy that can protect access and accelerate enterprises’ zero-trust initiatives. According to the company, protecting credentials isn’t enough. Despite large investments in legacy PAM solutions, cyberattacks are successful because of the privileged identity sprawl. PAM+ goes beyond legacy approaches to address the dangers by removing the unnecessary always-on, always-available privilege access; eliminating the impact of compromised admin credentials; rendering passwordstealing malware ineffective; and routing all administrative access with multi-factor authentication, among other capabilities. “Privilege sprawl and credential misuse are a factor in nearly every cyberattack, so much so that both are being specifically identified as reasons for rapidly increasing cyber insurance premiums,” Dodhiawala said. “The innovative PAM+ strategy promises to disrupt the stagnant PAM solutions market and truly solve for today’s operational and cybersecurity pains.” Dodhiawala said, “Employee user access reviews should always be pursued to ensure that as employees roles and responsibilities change, their access changes with them.” He explained, “There are entitlement automations that help with this rights alignment. Despite this vetting, privilege access sprawls still occur, which is why having an effective least privilege strategy like PAM+ is of paramount importance. This will minimize the potential damage a compromised user can cause and does so without breaking the business.” Session monitoring So, what happens after employees are given privileged access? “Monitoring every employee activity can generate an overwhelming amount of overhead and provide diminishing returns,” Dodhiawala said. “Instead, companies should monitor privileged sessions to enable a forensics team to track what privileged users are doing with their permissions. “By connecting a privileged access tool to a capable SIEM [security information and event management], a security team is able to create intelligent alerts that show when privileged access is being used versus when it’s being abused by a likely threat actor,” he continued. “With these alerts, security teams are able to effectively deploy resources and stop an attack in its tracks.” One area of larger companies that is frequently targeted by bad actors is human resources, Dodhiawala said, adding the infiltrators go there to obtain confidential details about employees and other resources. “Knowing these data repositories house sensitive data, it is the responsibility of the IT department to ensure strong controls are put in place to validate access using a zero-trust approach, which is don’t trust, always verify,” he said. “Additionally, HR personnel should ensure the prompt and complete deletion of customer/employee/ partner data in alignment with requisite standards.” Companies today are already using traditional PAM approaches, such as vaults, “but that alone isn’t solving for privilege sprawl within an environment. Companies should take a PAM+ approach to solve the problem,” Dodhiawala said. “This means instead of focusing on credentials (through vaulting or obfuscating alone), companies should focus on the access that the administrative account allows for. “By assuming that accounts will be compromised, the focus shifts from a password centric approach to an access-centric approach and limiting where admins are deployed. This shifts the focus to how an attacker thinks, from how a defender thinks,” he explained. “A true focus on zero trust is a sound approach to security tooling and processes. Ensuring you’re validating identity and access wherever possible is a strong stance to defending your most important assets,” Dodhiawala said. “Additionally, routinely ensuring that you’re actively monitoring activity in your most sensitive areas and business critical workflows will better equip you to deal with potential disruptions caused by attackers or other bad actors.” J 13 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
By Martin Vilaboy What Your Teams Are Doing on Teams The rewards and risks of collaboration solution user behavior At least in some ways, Microsoft Teams, along with many other cloud-delivered unified communications and collaboration platforms, came to the rescue when mandates and lockdowns forced workforces to spread out to kitchen counters and local Wi-Fi hotspots far beyond the edge of corporate networks. For from anything new, the feature and functionalities of UCaaS (unified communications-as-a-service) solutions such as Teams were rather mature in the marketplace if not widely adopted by 2019. But the rush to enable remote exposed just about everyone to the possibilities of the “new digital workspaces” enabled by these digital collaboration tools and functionalities – a workspace without borders where digital team members could connect and spontaneously collaborate from just about anywhere. INTELLIGENCE 14 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
After the past few years of widespread adoption, clearer pictures are forming as to how workers actually are utilizing the tools that provide those promises of “digital teaming” and how team members are interacting across the platforms. As might be expected, the user data doesn’t always match the common assumptions or best-case scenarios, and some behaviors even could be putting company assets and objectives at risk. For starters, in-depth analysis of Microsoft Teams user activity by collaboration analytics firm Swoop Analytics found that the vast majority of the activity across the platform takes place the on more traditional communications services, while the “digital teaming” type features, such as Channel, Groups and file sharing, have been underutilized. SWOOP Analytics benchmarking analysis assessed almost 100,000 teams on Microsoft Teams across 33 organizations over a three-month period. The firm also monitored the online interactions of 2,727 “meaningfully active” digital teams for a period of three months, through to February 2021. For a majority of organizations, said the research firm, the rapid adoption of Teams has been achieved using pre-Teams Skype for Business type features including chat, calls and meetings. “These features are not formally aligned with identified digital teams, where channel discussion threads are the most common activity,” they continued. The difference can be characterized as “chat versus channels,” said Swoop Analytics researchers, where chat essentially becomes a proxy for one-on-one email versus the channel’s promise of true digitally facilitated team collaboration. And on average less than 30 percent of staff make use of the channel functionality. Exclude consulting firms from the respondent pool, and that percentage drops to about 11 percent. A separate survey by technology market analysis firm Techconsult, on behalf of Hornetsecurity, similarly found that employees tend to prefer communicating directly via Teams User Chat over Group Channel conversations. Seven in 10 respondents agree they exchange more direct messages with colleagues via Teams User Chats than Group Channels, while just more than six in 10 admit to preferring chats over channels. The bias toward chats is greatest among the largest organizations. More than two-thirds (67 percent) of employees in companies with 5,000 or more employees prefer User Chats over Group Channel conversations, whereas that proportion in small businesses with 50 to 99 employees is only 57 percent. It should be noted how usage rates of Group Channels were significantly higher among organizations identified by Swoop Analytics as operating “elite superteams,” while “those exploiting Teams channels are delivering outsized value to their respective organizations,” said the analytics firm. Yet on average, 28 times as many Teams chat messages are sent compared to Teams channel messages sent. That might be expected, to some degree, given chats are often spontaneous and short-term, while channel messages are likely more thoughtfully composed and for longer-term use, Swoop researchers pointed out. Even so, the data overwhelming suggests that activity on the UCaaS platform is predominantly bi-directional rather than involving a true team. For the analysis, chat messages were categorized as Team Chats (more than two people involved) and Private Chats (one-on-one chat), and the data showed more than 98 percent of chats are private or one-onone, essentially replacing email as a preferred mode of internal communications. “The very small proportion of team chats sugHow Collaboration Solutions Are Used Source: Techconsult; Hornetsecurity Source: Robert Half Talent Solutions Team Type Prop rtions 2020/2021 70% 20% 10% 66% 23% 11% 62% 23% 15% 61% 26% 14% 38% 19% 43% I send a lot more direct messages than group messages. Despite groups, I prefer direct messages when writing to colleagues I also send business-critical and internal documents and messages to public groups. I send a lot more direct messages than channel message I also use direct messages for private conversations. 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Self-directed Single-Leader Community Forum 2021 2020 Mostly agree Partially agree Mostly disagree 15 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
gests chat is not contributing to broader knowledge sharing beyond email,” said the report. Likewise, more than 98 percent of all chat and calls monitored by Swoop Analytics were one-onone communications, therefore contributing little to organizationwide knowledge sharing. “We anticipate a majority of new Teams adopters will need to pause, reflect and perhaps retrofit some of the required practices that may have been overlooked in the rush to get teams online,” said Swoop Analytics researchers. Perhaps less surprising, the old 80/20 rule applies once again, with the vast majority of activity on Teams generated by a small minority of team members. This presents a problem to Swoop Analytics researchers, who noted how organizations that best utilize Teams tend to have digital teams that operate in a “self-directed” mode, in which interactions flow more circular, rather than a “singleleader mode,” which tend to be dominated by one team member simply disseminating information to the team. The good news on this part is that the proportion of teams that can be described as the aspirational “self-directed” was substantially higher in 2021, at 37 percent of teams, compared to 2020, when 19 percent of teams could be described as “self-directed.” Single-leader teams dropped from 17 percent in 2020 to 12 percent of all teams in 2021. “We see the movement toward more self-directed teams as a maturing of use, as staff start to appreciate which forms of teams have become most productive,” noted Swoop researchers. An app for that? From its very beginning, Teams has been positioned as a hub for all the worktools required to undertake day-to-day tasks, a positioning that was amplified by the release of Microsoft Viva, a suite of employee experience applications accessed through Teams, said Swoop analysts. In turn, the breadth and depth of the portfolio of applications added provide a measurable insight into how well Teams is delivering on its promise as a workplace hub. According to the analysis of the short-list of 2,727 active teams, only about one-third had added an application tab. Only 12 total teams had added 10 or more tabs. “With two-thirds of teams yet to add an application tab to their Teams space, the use of Teams as a hub is still a work in process,” said the report. Among the leading applications added to Teams are several Microsoft brands including OneNote, Planner, SharePoint and Excel, but Swoop Analytics saw an Team Types Identified Team Types Key Characteristics Self-directed Team Self-directed teams have many connections between the members, nearly everyone participates and a very low amount of inactive or passive members. Single-leader Team Single-leader teams rely on a single person to connect the team members, therefore, single-leader teams have a relatively high level of “key player dependency” (KPD). But since everyone participates, as the leader connects with team members, the “Connected Core” is also high. Reciprocity and inactive/passive members are at modest levels. Community Communities have a small group of connected members that all interact with each other, and then a larger set of people who are passive. Therefore, communities have relatively low to moderate KPD, a high Connected Core and moderate reciprocity. Levels of inactive and passive members are modest. Forum Forums have a lot of people following what is happening (reading), but only a minority are actively contributing. Those who are contributing are not tightly connected to each other. Therefore, Forums are mostly characterized by larger galleries of passive or inactive members. The Connected Core and Reciprocity levels are at the lower end and KPD at the higher end. Source: Swoop Analytics Source: Techconsult; Hornetsecurity Team Type Proportions 2020/2021 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Self-directed Single-Leader Community Forum 2021 2020 INTELLIGENCE 16 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
increase of non-M365 applications represented. “Not a flood,” said the report, “but moving in the right direction for establishing Teams as a workplace hub.” What We Do in the Shadows Along with “how” workforces are using Teams, also important is “where.” Because for the majority of businesses, “where” includes significant time on employees’ personal devices. According to the surveys by Techconsult, more than three-quarters of respondents use Microsoft Teams on their private end devices such as their smartphones or tablets. This reality, of course, comes with its own set of rewards and risks. The ominous reality of shadow IT and BYOB notwithstanding, Teams user data suggests that employees who access their in-house collaboration solution through their personal devices tend to be more engaged on the platform and more likely to engage with “digital teaming” type functions. For example, 74 percent of respondents who do not install Teams on their private end devices send and receive messages with four or more colleagues, while among respondents who also use Teams on their private end devices, 84 percent exchange messages with at least four or more colleagues each day. Similarly, 75 percent of employees who use Teams on their private end devices are active in three or more Group Channels. By contrast, just more than one in two respondents (53 percent) who do not have Microsoft Teams on their private end device are active in more than three Groups, show the Techconsult figures. On the other hand, along with the increased degree of internal communications, the use of private end devices also exposes a company to serious risks, Techconsult researchers pointed out. After all, “it isn’t just business-related and private messages that are exchanged but also data relating to everyday work as well as confidential and business-critical files,” said the research firm. What’s more, team members who access collaboration tools on their personal devices often are more likely to share sensitive information. Just more than one in two respondents admit to sharing “business-critical content,” such as operational data, metrics or competitive information through Teams. That includes 56 percent of team members who use Teams on their private devices compared to the 36 percent of those who don’t use their personal devices. Just more than one in two employees (51 percent) with Teams on their private end devices report to sharing “confidential information,” whereas 29 percent of employees without Teams on their private end devices said the same. Much the same thing played out when Teams members were asked about sharing “critical documents,” as nearly twice as many personal device users (43 percent) admitted to the behavior as those who stuck with company-owned devices (22 percent). Among all users, 45 percent of the respondents send “confidential information” via Teams on a frequent to very frequent basis, while 39 percent said they primarily use Teams to send “businesscritical” files. And a similar 39 percent of respondents don’t just share business-critical and internal documents and messages through direct messages but also through public groups. “Since the IT department has no control over the privately used end devices,” Techconsult analysts warned, “a proactive form of protection cannot be ensured.” In other words, the loss or theft of private end devices can lead to data protection breaches, if not risks to the corporate network, while a privately used and unprotected end devices can become infected with malware, which they can then distribute to the company network via the collaboration software. “In this sense, it may be the case that if permissions are set extensively enough, privately-used apps can also access business-critical data from Teams,” said the Techconsult report. In addition to security concerns, it’s not uncommon for employees to use a collaboration platform for storage of business messages and files, introducing issues surrounding data backup and availability. Already, 42 percent of respondents confirm that their IT managers have had to restore Teams data through backups. And, once again, the related use of private end devices may influence the risk to data, as almost one in two respondents (47 percent) with Teams on their private end device has had experiences with data recovery using Teams compared to the 26 percent who don’t have Teams on their private end device. “This mixing of personal and business data is associated with many risks which should be taken into account in the context of the security and backup strategy,” argued the report. It’s unlikely we’ll see heavyhanded restrictions on the use of personal devices to access collaboration solutions. After all, the 600 percent increase in Teams usage between November 2019 and November 2020 (making it the fastest-growing Microsoft business application ever) was in large part to enable remote-based workers, and remote workers use their personal phones and laptops. The risks are simply the reality. “In the event of loss or theft of the private end devices, restricted and confidential data may become public and harm the company,” argued Techconsult analysts. “This means that the IT departments have to be proactive and prepared accordingly.” J 17 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
Conversational intelligence (CAI) and natural language understanding (NLU) are shaking up contact centers worldwide because when they are put together, customer experience (CX) improves. “The demand for customer service has grown significantly in the past three years, and so has the technology to transform service experiences,” said Philipp Heltewig, co-founder and CEO of Cognigy, which recently was placed on the “Constellation ShortList for Conversational A.I.” “As organizations struggle with customer service and employee engagement, conversational AI is more relevant than ever,” Heltewig said. “These enterprises have realized that automation through conversational AI is a must-have to deliver top-notch customer service.” Constellation Research advises leaders on leveraging disruptive technologies to achieve business model transformation and streamline business processes. Products and services named to the Constellation ShortList meet specific threshold criteria for the respective category as determined through client inquiries, partner conversations, customer references, vendor selection projects, market share and internal research. “Conversational AI is widely used in organizations that engage in customer service of every kind – everything from retail and health care to banking and transportation,” said R “Ray” Wang, chairman and founder at Constellation Research. “Underscoring this ubiquity is the acceleration of the work-from-home movement and more and more businesses moving online.” Training, access to proper data/systems, oversight, maintenance, personalization, localization and understanding of complex conversations are all cited as areas of concern for enterprises By Bruce Christian INTELLIGENCE 18 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
looking at conversational AI,” said Wang, “and we’ve taken these into consideration when compiling our ShortList of solutions.” Remembering ELIZA Cognigy’s enterprise software for CAI platform automates customer and employee communications. Available in on-premises and SaaS environments, Cognigy.AI enables enterprises to have natural language conversations with their users on any channel: webchat, SMS, voice and mobile apps – and in any language. “The origins of conversational AI date back to the 1960s with the first chatbot software developed at MIT in 1966,” said Cognigy’s senior vice president Hardy Myers. “It was a computer program named ELIZA that used natural language processing to emulate a psychotherapist’s responses to patients.” Of course, it would be years later when contact centers began to adopt CAI. Myers said that adoption paralleled advances in natural language processing and machine learning that have made chatbots and voicebots viable and complementary to (human) customer-facing and agent-enabling technology for improving CX. “Most enterprises today believe that delivering superior CX is critical to their current and future ability to compete,” Myers said. “Contact centers are embracing CAI as part of this mandate to improve CX while improving efficiency. “The necessity for CAI-driven automation in the contact center was further amplified during COVID-19, when the current generation of contact center technology and the existing labor pool were challenged to meet the increased service demand in certain verticals most impacted, e.g., airlines, health care providers and insurance carriers,” Myers said. CAI or AI? Despite the growing efficiency of CAI, many companies still promote their use of artificial intelligence (AI). So, what’s the difference? “IBM defines artificial intelligence as ‘technology that leverages computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind,’” Myers said. “Conversational AI is the set of AI-based technologies that facilitate more natural conversations between humans and machines. “The practical application of CAI is the modern day chatbots and voicebots that you now experience when interacting with the contact centers of larger, more innovative organizations that are focused on transforming their customer experience,” he added. One reason some companies may not be switching from AI to CAI is cost, Myers suggested. “The latest generation of CAI technology is relatively new, and its benefits not yet widely understood. Other technologies that don’t have the same CX-transforming or efficiency impacting results can get prioritized.” CX is high priority Optimistically, Myers said the situation is changing because CX is such a high enterprise priority, and automated CAI solutions are necessary to help solve the problem. “Candidly, it’s incumbent on the leading CAI vendors to better educate customers of how transforming this technology is to their CX initiatives,” he said. Advantages to switching are “very clear and readily measurable,” Myers insisted, citing improved CX, improved efficiency and improved agent engagement. As examples he cited how service requests can be processed more efficiently with customers able to access their accounts 24/7. Also, agents can be onboarded more quickly, leading to lower training costs, higher agent availability and improved customer satisfaction. While there are advantages to CAI, limitations also exist. For starters, CAI is a new, complex technology with limited levels of industry expertise in design and deployment, while generic natural language understanding (NLU) models may not be “smart” enough to understand or speak accurately with customers in certain applications/ use cases. Solutions also can lack the flexibility to support legacy infrastructure and systems of record, while insight into activity or how to improve the results of a CAI deployment can be insufficient. To overcome these limitations, Cognigy has built a low-code enterprise CAI platform that is less complex and much easier to use resulting in faster and more successful deployments, said the company. It also developed a robust set of technical tools includWhich activities are the most time-consuming? Source: ICMI; Nice contact center sur vey Source: Palo Alto Networks Routine or mundane administrative tasks Routine or mundane customer interactions Trying to find the answer or information Training Reporting Coaching Sheduling and forecasting 26% 34% 18% 14% 17% 14% 17% 17% 8% 7% 11% 6% 9% Overall Agents What factors drove increases in volume and complexity? Source: ICMI; Nice contact center sur vey Number of customers Staff competnecy or training Use of additional channels, digital, and/or self-service channels Customer competency or education Compliance or security Number of staff Scope of services offered New systems, equipment, or devices 46% 34% 35% 35% 34% 45% 34% 39% 36% 19% 29% 22% 32% 33% 22% 20% Volume Complexity U.S. Employee Engagement Trend, Annual Averages % Engaged % Actively disengaged 26 18 16 17 15 20 18 19 19 17 14 30 28 30 28 29 30 32 33 3 26 19 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
ing training and demonstration environments to enable developers and other technology teams to develop CAI expertise rapidly. The platform was designed with high levels of scalability and unlimited extensibility to meet large enterprise demand requirements while integrating with virtually any enterprise on-premises or cloud contact center technology and systems of record, Myers continued. NLU’s role The addition of NLU is at the core of CAI, and it is critical for creating advanced automated digital and voice experiences, according to Myers. “Cognigy’s powerful native NLU capabilities – as well as its ability to integrate with other leading NLU models like IBM Watson, Amazon Lex, etc. – ensure the optimal outcomes,” Myers said. “Without going into greater detail, Cognigy’s CAI platform supports NLU for 100-plus languages with the NLU models for 28 of the most common global languages further optimized. “Our NLU engine has been designed to ensure optimal customer intent recognition and consistently outperforms other leading NLU models for accuracy,” he continued. “It also supports broad bot localization capabilities and real-time translation of either human-to-machine or human-tohuman interactions.” In today’s remote/hybrid workforce model, CAI and NLU are great tools to have. “Conversational AI helps organizations rearchitect the modern-day workplace,” Myers said. “The new normal is some version of hybrid workplace and about changing the way enterprises do business. It means providing customers with an exceptional human/digital experience regardless of time, day or employee location. It means providing agents (employees) the tools they need to deliver an outstanding customer experience regardless of location.” He said agents benefit from an CAI automation-first approach because they no longer need to answer simple, repetitive questions. “They can now handle the more complex questions and thereby achieve higher job satisfaction,” Myers said. “With CAI, bots also can assist agents with answering customer inquiries, speeding up the agent training process and promoting knowledge building. This reduces handle time and increases first call resolution.” Another major advantage of CAI for contact centers is its multi-lingual capabilities, Myers continued, explaining that CAI can translate human-to-machine and human-tohuman interactions in real time, which eliminates the need for contact centers to hire people who speak specific languages. AI became prevalent with contact centers because of its ability to collect data, which can be useful for everything from monitoring calls, scheduling for peak times and, of course, training of customer service representatives. The good news is that CAI solutions also have built-in analytics that enable an organization to analyze and improve the performance of their agents and bots. “We understand the criticality of next-generation contact centers for delivering transformative CX,” Myers said. “We are laser-focused on delivering defined contact center-related use cases like conversational IVR, smart self-service and agent + assist that deliver measurable experience or efficiency impacting outcomes. “Finally, our best-of-breed interoperability and extensibility, including dozens of pre-built channel and system of record integrations, ensure that enterprises are ‘futureproofed’ when they purchase Cognigy’s enterprise CAI solution,” he concluded. J INTELLIGENCE rwsmagazine.com Source: ICMI; Nice contact center sur vey 9% Overall Agents What factors drove increases in volume and complexity? Source: ICMI; Nice contact center sur vey Number of customers Staff competnecy or training Use of additional channels, digital, and/or self-service channels Customer competency or education Compliance or security Number of staff Scope of services offered New systems, equipment, or devices 46% 34% 35% 35% 34% 45% 34% 39% 36% 19% 29% 22% 32% 33% 22% 20% Volume Complexity U.S. Employee Engagement Trend, Annual Averages Source: Gallup % Engaged % Actively disengaged 26 18 2000 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2 16 17 15 20 18 19 19 17 14 13 1 30 28 30 28 29 30 32 33 35 36 Workers with High Rate of Burnout Want to Leave Company 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 26 20 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS
For businesses of every size, the pandemic accelerated the shift toward hybrid information technology solutions that facilitate both remote and inoffice communication and collaboration for customers and employees. In the marketplace today, this has increasingly involved mobile and office phones with integrated software that offers sophisticated voice, video, messaging and workforce management capabilities. This has augmented the complexity of the phone system requirements and presented businesses with a plethora of options. Users usually operate from office phones and mobile devices and are working more in and out of the office, so there is a greater demand for forwarding messages to avoid missing calls. Also, a host of new services beyond calling are often expected such as short message service (SMS)/multimedia messaging service (MMS), video conferencing, visual voicemail and call recording. On top of all this, the phone system increasingly is connected through APIs to existing company systems such as contact centers, workforce management and CRM systems, so important data can be monitored and evaluated in various ways. The challenge for businesses, however, has been dealing with issues of quality and integration, along with constantly escalating provider prices and add-on fees that can end up costing more than $70 per user each month. When managers need the services to stay operational but do not have the time or inclination to sort through complex billing, they can feel like a captive of their technology provider. “Today, business owners feel besieged with all the software-asa-service fees, which constantly creep upward, never downward, in cost. They are enticed with low offers to start, and then the price doubles or triples on renewal or any changes,” said Eric Brackett, president of BTI Communications Group, a technology convergence provider serving the business and logistics sectors. The company acts as a single-source provider of complex phone (VoIP), network and physical security systems. “Bait-and-switch phone system pricing is a huge burden on businesses when it becomes overhead and an operating expense,” he added. “Instead, managers want to capitalize the full cost over a few INTELLIGENCE Business VOIP Simplified By Del Williams A new fixed cost option eliminates high licensing and add-on fees while integrating voice, video, text, web, contact center, CRM and workforce management tools 21 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com
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