Ensuring a Secure Video Solution in Our (New) Virtual World: How to Fight the Other Invisible Threat

With families across the world seeking refuge in the safety of their homes during this global health crisis, technology has taken a front seat in helping to create a sense of normalcy. From video calls with grandparents, virtual board meetings, or professor-led lectures with hundreds of students, video has been especially important in helping us all feel connected during this time of isolation.

With social distancing guidelines extended in many parts of the world, this technology not only keeps us connected to loved ones, colleagues and our studies, but also keeps us safe from the outside threat of infection. But what other threats does this virtual exposure open us up to?

Overcoming Limits to Virtual Privacy

Given the large scale of remote work and remote schooling taking place globally, there is understandably a heightened concern around security in the industry. And in light of privacy breaches of some video solutions reported in recent weeks, this concern is now shared by those relying on these solutions daily. 

Video solution providers in the market today have done a tremendous job of quickly addressing this worldwide need for technology to facilitate face-to-face communication. During an unprecedented and unbelievably challenging situation, these solutions have made all the difference for family and friends, remote teams, and colleagues who have been separated. But that’s just one piece of the very large need we will continue to see as this crisis continues to unfold.

Programmable Video = Limitless Capabilities

For more specific use cases that call for the benefits of a face-to-face video chat but that also have more complex requirements, programmability is the answer. Using Vonage APIs allows you to easily embed video into your apps to solve your unique problems in a secure and scalable way. 

Vonage’s video has been a worldwide leader in webRTC video solutions since the webRTC standard was established in 2012. The programmable communications capabilities we can offer via our Video APIs enables any organization to embed video capabilities into any software or service that needs it. In fact, Vonage’s Video API has experienced significant growth over the last three months, especially in the telehealth, social and education verticals, and has delivered more than 50 billion minutes of video since inception, across a virtually unlimited number of use cases. For example, using our video APIs, Vonage customer and telehealth provider Doxy.me has seen explosive growth during the week of March 23, 2020 alone with 139,000 providers and 1.35 million patients starting to use telemedicine services for a total of 170 million video minutes.

Vonage is powering some of the largest online working environments across the globe, including:

• Telemedicine environments for those combatting the pandemic that also require HIPAA compliance;

• Educational institutions and teachers working tirelessly to keep our kids moving forward and that need to create virtual classrooms where children are protected from uninvited guests; and

• Financial services providers that need to ensure privacy for client consultations

The current pandemic underscores and accelerates the need for secure and privacy-compliant video interactions. Leveraging Vonage Video APIs, enterprise customers around the world and across all industries, have successfully designed secure and privacy-compliant solutions for their end users.

Whether that is through the ability to randomly generate a unique meeting ID to prevent overlap, two factor authentication to ensure security, capping the number of participants to accommodate and track a finite number of students, or even limiting to a list of names or email addresses, our Video API allows for these and so many more capabilities to deliver secure and privacy-compliant solutions.

Moving Forward, Ready for Anything

As the weeks go by, there may be more complex requirements to meet an increased level of security within any video interaction. The flexibility of API building blocks means there is no limit to what you can build or design to meet these needs head on and to be ready for each new challenge as it arises.

There is no doubt that this global event will, and already has, changed the way we work, live and learn - probably forever. We need tools that are flexible, scalable, programmable and easy to use so that we are ready for what tomorrow brings.