Cisco Webex Messaging

Webex was founded in 1995. The company was acquired by Intranets.com in 2005 and by Cisco Systems two years later.

Messaging is available in the Webex App. Public spaces are discoverable rooms where groups of employees can collaborate across teams and business silos. Users can also create private spaces for smaller Webex teams to collaborate or send direct and group messages.

Webex by Cisco takes user privacy seriously. All messaging and file sharing is end-to-end encrypted as standard, preventing messages from being intercepted and read by people outside your organization. Webex customers can also opt-in to two-factor authentication (2FA) or multi-factor authentication (MFA) to further enhance privacy and security.

Webex by Cisco and Microsoft Teams are both collaboration tools widely used by many of the world’s largest companies for internal and external users. They offer more comprehensive collaboration capabilities than video conferencing tools like Zoom or Skype. Webex enables bidirectional integrations via API, meaning its tool can run inside other apps, and other apps can run in the Webex tool. One example is enabling Webex Messaging directly in Salesforce. Microsoft Teams only supports one-way integrations, meaning MS Teams users can’t access their Teams account features from within other applications and tools. Webex Meetings does integrate with Microsoft Teams, and users can initiate Webex meetings within Microsoft Teams channels.

Cisco Webex Control Hub is a central management and auditing dashboard for Webex by Cisco that feeds some eDiscovery systems. From the Control Hub, admins can add or remove end users, assign roles and view analytics reports. Using the reports provided in the dashboard, legal, security and compliance officers can conduct some eDiscovery investigations in Webex. Information such as user session data, meeting content and bot activity is available, although for the most insight admins must upgrade to Pro Pack for Control Hub. With Aware, administrators gain even more insight into Webex Messaging and can perform faster, more efficient eDiscovery with federated search capabilities, automated notifications and Machine Learning (ML)-infused workflows.

Webex for Government offers enhanced security and compliance solutions and is FedRAMP authorized.

Webex adheres to the EU Cloud Code of Conduct, which helps support businesses in complying with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by protecting personal user data. Aware further enables GDPR compliance requirements in Webex by quickly surfacing content by custodian to improve responses to Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs) or employees’ Right to be Forgotten.

Aware enables advanced compliance adherence for Webex by ingesting messages in near real time and automatically scanning for unauthorized or restricted content using intelligent workflows informed by regular expressions (RegEx) and keywords. When Personal Identifiable Information (PII), Protected Health Information (PHI) or Payment Card Industry (PCI) data is detected, companies can choose to automatically coach the employee and/or notify leaders to review the message and take action.

Aware ingests and analyzes collaboration across all of Webex Messaging, including from public and private spaces and group and direct messages.

Aware supports Data Loss Prevention (DLP) in Webex by Cisco through AI-powered, rules-based monitoring that surfaces more instances of risky or unauthorized behavior within Webex Messaging. Using workflows configured for the enterprise’s specific needs, information security officers can exercise centralized governance and data protection across the Webex ecosystem. This gives organizations greater control over information sharing and enables custom retention policies in Webex.

Aware contextual intelligence platform gives companies the power to protect sensitive data and access valuable business insights across all major collaboration tools from a single, centralized source of truth. Aware ingests data simultaneously from Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, WorkJam and more.

Using Aware, business leaders can unlock next-generation operational and people intelligence from intelligent analysis of collaboration messages at scale. Aware organically surfaces the topics trending across the business, giving leadership complete overview of shifting sentiment, a continuous pulse of the organization and the ability to track key initiatives in near real time.

Aware’s Webex analytics deliver ROI by consolidating and streamlining compliance, DLP, eDiscovery, and risk management in a central platform compatible with Webex and other collaboration tools. This unified solution provides complete visibility, lowers IT lift, reduces the need for purchasing and maintaining multiple point-solutions for each functionality and platform, and mitigates the risk of fines, penalties, legal and regulatory action associated with noncompliance, HR violations, and eDiscovery oversights.

The Aware platform integrates seamlessly to Webex using native APIs and webhooks, ensuring minimal IT lift, continuous data ingestion, and zero impact on end users.

Analytics from aggregate user activity in Webex can provide the business with valuable insight into the topics and themes of most concern to the organization, the root cause of shifting sentiment among employees, and insights into areas of risk and noncompliance. Businesses can also use metrics from Webex meetings to evaluate their data usage and retention strategies.

The data collected during Webex meetings, webinars, and Webex Calling depends on the settings and configurations of the specific Webex instance, but may include:

• User data such as name, email, phone number, and profile information
• Meeting data, including meeting attendees, transcriptions, uploaded files, whiteboard content, and poll results
• Performance data like hardware, OS, app version, and troubleshooting and diagnostics

The precise user privacy concerns will depend on the jurisdiction and settings in use by the business. Those with EU employees or customers may be required to manage data in relation to the GDPR, while US-only companies may be bound by CCPA/CPRA and similar legislation. Typically, employees have no expectation of privacy in company-owned tools, and individual user data may be surfaced in response to legal requests or internal investigations. However, organizations should carefully consider how to safeguard the rights and privacy of each employee within Webex while meeting their business needs.