As the countdown begins towards Genesys G-Force 2016, we thought it was a good time to review some of the security challenges organizations may face when using the world’s number one customer experience platform.
Today’s realities have made security and the protection of personal identifiable information (PII) of paramount importance for every organization across all of the technologies they operate. There is no shortage of methodologies and tools for testing for vulnerabilities in network environments and applications, but none of them are designed to address the unique characteristics of a fully integrated customer experience platform like Genesys provides. There are two important challenges that are often overlooked.
Challenge #1 - Limited View
Genesys CX solutions are designed to be extremely open, configurable, and extensible. To achieve open integration and communication within its own application set and with other CX related applications, Genesys technologies use industry standard network communication technologies and methods. These standards based communication methods can sometimes be tested and secured using conventional vulnerability testing, but the unconventional way Genesys components use, or integrate with, the standard network stack creates a challenge for “off the shelf” security scanning tools.
For instance, web servers are often used by Genesys to host proprietary applications that are only accessed by other Genesys processes. Most vulnerability testing tools and methodologies are unable to tell the difference between a server hosting internal web applications and one that hosts customer facing pages or apps. Consequently, they take a catch-all approach that treats all web processes equally. This can result in “false positives” which an IT organization will strive to correct while, at times, inadvertently leaving actual vulnerabilities that their tests didn’t find out in the open.
Challenge #2 - Proprietary protocols
Genesys uses a combination of proprietary protocols and configurations throughout their applications, while other Genesys applications (like web servers) use industry standard protocols such as SIP or RTP in unique ways to meet their requirements. In both cases, because of their proprietary/non-typical use, vulnerabilities can be unaccounted for by standard testing. This makes testing a Genesys environment far more complicated than many other penetration testing efforts.
So what should you do? The good news is that you can improve the security posture of your Genesys environment. It requires a holistic approach to security and an understanding of how the Genesys platform works and integrates with your other systems. In our next CX blog we’ll share some of the specific areas you need to look at in order to keep your Genesys environment secure.
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To Learn more about Online Business Systems’ approach to SecureCX click here.
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