Answering the FAQ: Is Video Support Secure?

When companies adopt new technology – especially technology which is going to be used with customers – privacy concerns always come into play.   I recently participated in a few webinars co-hosted with TSIA and time and time again the topic of privacy considerations and how it relates to video support tools was a point of discussion. It’s not surprising privacy would be a top concern with video support. Customers are allowing companies to capture them, their environment and potentially sensitive information, unfiltered and they want to know that this setting and the information they are providing is safe.

We never take privacy and security lightly and Rescue Lens is no exception. From a pure security standpoint, Rescue Lens can only be started with an authenticated PIN, using a single peer-to-peer connection – ensuring that the only two parties on the connection are meant to be there.

To protect privacy, we’ve built Rescue Lens so that the end user is in control. At the start of the session, they are prompted to permit or deny access to their device’s camera so the session doesn’t start until they want it to. Also, once in the session, the end user can pause or terminate the stream at any point right from the app.

On the organization side, we know that it’s important for companies to have auditable records to protect both the themselves and their customers.  To that end, Rescue Lens gives company’s the option of having sessions recorded and stored (on their own servers). Additionally, we give companies access to detailed logs so they know when sessions were run, for how long, and by whom. Finally, while not an explicit privacy consideration, we also provide companies the ability to add their own terms and conditions into our Rescue Lens app to ensure everyone is playing from the same rule book.

We have spent a lot of time and consideration building features that hopefully help ease security and privacy concerns of our customers and end users, but a good security posture must go beyond just technical features.  Security, like most things, is a team effort. Employing best practices across your organization is also a necessary component.   Properly train your support agents on how to use a video support tool and how to explain to customers how the videos will be captured and used. Be transparent with customers in initial conversations and in contracts by calling out that this type of tool may be used to support them and under what conditions that will happen, and make sure there is an agreement across parties.  Ensure that, if you are recording sessions for auditing or training purposes, those sessions and the information contained with them are securely stored.

We believe that interactive video support is a game changer for the industry – one that will bring customer experience to a whole new level.  In order for it to truly hit the mainstream, however, security and privacy needs to remain a top priority.   Our work is never done — both technology and best practices need to consistently evolve to meet the growing and often unpredictable security landscape.