Legal Aspects of Communication Through CCaaS and UCaaS

Kevin V. Nguyen

March 16, 2019

There are legal implications for communications, and it is important for companies to understand how these implications apply to them. Businesses should also know how to respond accordingly to protect themselves from liability.

Within a CCaaS context, it is fairly easy for legal issues to occur if businesses don't take care to protect themselves. In this article, you can learn more about how to protect your organization.

Legal Aspects of Communication

Communications platforms have a lot of legal implications for businesses to pay attention to. For instance:

Customer privacy: In certain contexts, consumers have privacy protection.
Personal data collection: Data collected online, through digital means, or otherwise may be protected.
Customer communications: Some communications may be legally protected.

Depending on the context, communications and information gathered about customers may be legally protected. How to stay compliant with these laws largely depends on the industry and type of communications.

How Do Specific Industries Need to Stay Compliant with Their Communications?

It all depends on the industry. Here are a few industry-specific communications laws:

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA): This finance industry law regulates how consumer information is used and protected, among other things. Customer records and information are supposed to be protected against both recognized and potential threats, so they can be reasonably kept private. Unauthorized use that could be harmful or cause inconvenience to customers is restricted against.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA): A healthcare industry law, HIPAA specifically protects healthcare communications and healthcare information. It spells out how companies and healthcare organizations are to provide sufficient protection for patient information. The standard, generally, uses a reasonable care and safe harbor rule requiring organizations to respect and make good faith attempts to protect patient data from physical, digital, and other security threats.
Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX): Corporate accounting scandals resulted in the passing of this law designed to bring transparency and accountability to publicly-traded companies. As a consequence of SOX, companies have to be careful about what records they destroy and how they conduct their record keeping.

With protected communications, companies may need to conduct regular audits to ensure ongoing compliance and sufficient care. Staying compliant requires reasonable effort to prevent security breeches discourage unauthorized use, and keep communications accountable.

How Do They Relate to CCaaS, UCaaS, and VoIP?

Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) must follow specific protocol in many instances in order to stay compliant with legal regulations.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service for specific industries impacted by privacy and security regulations must ensure continued compliance and cooperation with the right legal standards.

When conducting audits of communications platforms, following specific standards can be helpful. Here are some questions to ask:

Is wireless Internet used for communications? Is that connection's encryption strong enough?
Are the VoIP and data networks integrated? This can expose more data and potentially create greater risk.
How easy would it be for hackers (or phreakers, in the case of telephony) to intercept calls on your network?
How do you keep unauthorized users away from accessing consumer data?

Answering these and other relevant questions may help your organization stay on target with communications and compliance.

Getting Started with Compliant Communications

Legally, there are compliance issues with using communications systems. This can be particularly true in certain industries such as finance and healthcare. Exercising care and conducting regular audits can help organizations recognize threats and do what's necessary to minimize their own liability risks.

It's important to use a communications platform from a vendor who recognizes what your industry needs to stay compliant. By getting a vendor who knows your industry, your organization can stay protected and make sure the right audits are conducted to ensure privacy and security with communications.

When it comes to ensuring legal communication, 8x8 provides reliable and compliant cloud solutions at a demanding level rarely seen by other cloud providers. Don't take your chances with a subpar cloud-based telecom system. Call 1-855-773-2627 or fill out an online form to request a no-obligation quote from an 8x8 product specialist.