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the view from the saddle / feb 2015
THE CLOUD
CONTACT CENTER
AND THE MONSTER
UNDER THE BED
As the cloud becomes a defining
force for contact centers, it is
important to keep data security
worries in perspective.
By Paul Stockford
@paulstockford
Saddletree Research
Pipeline Articles
www.contactcenterpipeline.com
THE CLOUD CONTACT CENTER AND THE MONSTER UNDER THE BED
Paul Stockford
Saddletree Research
The monster under
the cloud contact
center bed is data
security.
I
f you read my column last month, you’ve already met my maternal grandmother. Like
most grandmothers, she spoiled my younger brother and me when my parents weren’t
around. She lived with us from the time I was born until she passed away in 1988
(someday I’m going to nominate my father for sainthood). When my parents went for a rare
evening out, she always took care of us.
Regular readers will also remember from last month that, when I was a kid growing up in the
San Francisco Bay Area, there were only a handful of television channels on TV, one of which was
KTVU from Oakland, Calif. Every Saturday night, KTVU presented “Creature Features,” a program
that showed vintage horror movies from 9 to 11 p.m., which was way past our bedtime so we
never got to watch it. But when my parents were out for an infrequent Saturday night without
us tagging along, guess which program my brother and I always begged our grandmother to
let us watch?
On one particular Saturday night when my parents were out, etched in my memory forever,
“Creature Features” was showing a Vincent Price movie called “The Last Man on Earth.” After
much whining and cajoling, my grandmother allowed us to watch the movie with the promise
that, if my parents came home while it was still on, we’d run to our room and jump into bed
so they wouldn’t know she’d let us stay up. The deal was sealed.
“The Last Man on Earth” was a film that was clearly ahead of its time. In the movie, Vincent
Price was the last man left alive on earth after a plague turned everyone else on Earth into
a zombie. Each night, Vincent had to take a shotgun and whatever other weapons he could
conjure up and go out and kill the zombies that walked up and down his street and tried to
break into his house. Those zombies were the scariest thing my young eyes had ever seen.
As luck would have it, my parents stayed out late that night and my brother and I got to
witness the end of the movie as Vincent lost his battle against the zombies when he was
impaled with a spear on the altar of a church in which he had taken refuge when a zombie
hunting trip turned sour.
Needless to say, that night when I went to bed, and on many nights thereafter, my brother
and I spent more than a few minutes peeking out of the curtain of our bedroom making sure
there were no zombies walking down our street before we tried to go to sleep. Vincent Price’s
zombies became the monster under my bed.
The monster under the bed was and still is a pretty common phenomenon among young
children. Any of you who are parents can attest to this. In fact, if you go to wikiHow.com, you
can find specific instructions for eradicating the monster under the bed. So modern science
has provided a solution for the monster under the bed for kids, but what about the monster
under the bed in the cloud contact center?
The results of the year-end survey of end users conducted by my company, Saddletree
Research, in conjunction with the National Association of Call Centers (NACC) at The University
of Southern Mississippi, points to the probability that many of us still believe that the monster
under the cloud contact center bed is data security. Forty-six percent of this year’s survey
respondents indicated that they have no intention of moving all or any part of their contact
center to the cloud. When we asked them what might be holding them back from making the
move to the cloud, the vast majority, 64%, stated it was because of data security concerns.
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THE CLOUD CONTACT CENTER AND THE MONSTER UNDER THE BED
Cite DATA SECURITY
CONCERNS as
holding them back
from moving to the cloud
This response is easy to understand given the recent and highly publicized data security breaches
suffered by such well-known companies as Target and Home Depot. If they can be hacked, doesn’t it
stand to reason that any company is equally vulnerable? That’s a question that isn’t easily answered.
There are clearly steps that can be taken to ensure the security of company and customer data
in the contact center, and a lot of them aren’t that difficult. I recently had the opportunity to chat
with Mike McAlpen who is the Executive Director of Information Security and Data Privacy at cloud
contact center provider 8x8. According to Mike, “One of the first things you should do is make sure
your cloud contact center provider can provide you with third-party verification of their compliance.
Depending on your business, there are a number of validations available.
“For example,” McAlpen continued, “Reputable third-party information security and data privacy
validations include auditors who are certified as a Qualified Security Assessor. There is also ISO
27001 certification for basic security and data privacy due diligence. Cloud contact center providers
have a number of validations from which to choose.”
Given the competitive nature of the contact center and many other industries, it is not unusual to
find that some companies, in order to minimize costs, will choose to save money on the front-end
coding process and take a chance on their company’s data not being compromised. This is a fool’s
game. As 8x8’s McAlpen points out, “There are many security scanning tools that should be part of
the process to ensure that major coding vulnerabilities are eliminated up front. These tools come
from such familiar companies as HP and IBM and can go a long way toward protecting a company’s
data and reputation.”
The reality of today’s contact center world requires constant diligence against data security
breaches, but I don’t believe it’s as dangerous as many people think. If you use CRM solutions such
as Salesforce.com, you’re already in the cloud. As the cloud becomes a defining force in the contact
center industry it will be important to keep the security issue in perspective.
It takes a lot more than Vincent Price’s zombies to scare me these days, but it still happens. For
example, I just read that Rod Stewart turned 70 years old last month. Rockin’ Rod a septuagenarian?
That’s scary.
Paul Stockford is Chief Analyst at Saddletree Research, which
specializes in contact centers & customer service.
pstockford@saddletreeresearch.com
(480) 922-5949
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THE CLOUD CONTACT CENTER AND THE MONSTER UNDER THE BED
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