When face-to-face meetings aren’t possible, video communication is the next best thing.
As the U.S. adapts to working remotely as countries try to slow the spread of the coronavirus, employees are relying on video now more than ever.
If you’re using Cisco BE6K or BE7K, incorporating video to your internal communications is as simple as ensuring your licenses are tied to the right hardware to enable it.
Implementing video for remote employees or external communications requires additional security considerations, though, since it’s imperative to protect your shared audio, video, and content from hackers.
For businesses that want a secure path for media sharing, Cisco Expressway is the best way to ensure the security of your video, content, and audio for your remote workers and contacts outside of your organization.
What is Cisco Expressway?
While BE6K is great for enriching your communications with video and content sharing, unless you have Cisco Expressway, these interactions are limited to internal, in-office use.
Without proper security measures, you can’t share these capabilities on calls with other businesses, your customers, or even with remote employees.
Inside your organization, a firewall protects your data. However, remote workers need a dedicated firewall or a purpose-built machine, like Expressway, to protect their data on video calls.
Without proper security measures, you can’t share these capabilities on calls with other businesses, your customers, or even with remote employees.
Cisco Expressway solves that problem, though, by providing a secure path for employees outside of your physical office to make and receive audio and video calls.
Expressway’s capabilities are impressive on their own, but what makes it stand out is how it extends video communications while also protecting the security of your network.
How Does Cisco Expressway ensure security?
The key to keeping your call system secure is preventing attackers from getting into it. This means not directly exposing your BE6K or BE7K system to the Internet. If an attacker were to get in, they can packet capture all of the media you share through your collaboration solution.Â
For users connected to your network within your office, a firewall protects outsiders from accessing any component of your network.
However, for remote employees wanting to use BE6K or BE7K licenses outside of your company network, Expressway is the only way to access your Cisco call system.
Expressway presents a way to securely enable video calls and extend media capabilities for business-to-business and business-to-consumer calls.
There are three ways Cisco Expressway provides a secure path for remote workers:
- Cisco Expressway consists of two servers.
- Expressway-E server is in the DMZ.
- Â A secure pathway connects users between Expressway-E and Expressway-C.
If you’re a business using a Cisco collaboration solution and looking to extend your video capabilities while maintaining a strong security posture, Expressway’s configuration is your answer.
Cisco Expressway consists of two servers
Secure communication is possible with Expressway because it uses two servers.
The core server, known as Expressway-C, sits inside and acts as a firewall traversal client.
The second server, Expressway-E server, is on the edge of your network and is the only point of access to the public Internet.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t secure, though.
Dual firewalls keep Expressway-E Server secure in the DMZ
To allow remote users to access your Expressway-E server, it sits in your network’s demilitarized zone (DMZ).
However, it’s still important to protect your server from attackers that you don’t want to gain access to your private network and thus your proprietary data.
This level of security is typically accomplished by protecting the server (in this case the Expressway-E server) by two firewalls. The primary firewall sits between the internet connection and the server. Meanwhile, the second firewall is part of the Expressway-E server and provides an additional layer of protection, including intrusion detection and prevention systems.
When the Expressway-E server is installed this way, remote users can access it from their home network and communicate securely with the Expressway Core server in the private domain.
Secure communication is possible by the tunnel to the core server
As a company, you’ll need your firewalls and routers configured to only allow direct connection to the DMZ, this serves as a tunnel for your remote users to access your BE6K or BE7K system.
This tunnel connects users on their home networks to your BE6K or BE7K call system without allowing outside (and possibly malicious traffic) access to your secure network.
(It’s worth noting that on-premises you should also configure your internal systems to connect only to the DMZ and have firewall policies to reflect this practice.)
How you can use secure Expressway connections
Secure Expressway connections enable you to make video calls and share media through your existing BE6k or BE7K system for two types of communications:
1. Remote workers needing to communicate with other remote or in-office employees
Video calls are increasing in popularity among internal communications.
Opting for a video call as opposed to a traditional audio-only call, allows you to read the other person’s body language and have a more personal interaction, even if you aren’t physically nearby.
When you use Expressway, users have a secure connection to share video and content without needing to use a VPN client since the solution handles its own security for Cisco IP phones and Cisco Jabber clients.
2. In-office or remote workers wanting to add video to external conversations
Video calls have the same benefits when communicating with your customers or external colleagues.
With Expressway integrated into your collaboration stack, you can make and receive video calls on a SIP URI.
As long as external contact is compliant with RFC (request for comments) standards, you’ll be able to share video with each other through Expressway.
You could even move your contact center to a remote workforce by enabling users to use Cisco Finesse remotely alongside Cisco Expressway.
However, if you’re using Cisco Webex Meetings to make video calls and not directly calling an external user, you don’t need to worry about license and compliance requirements.
Why should you consider Cisco Expressway?
The need for video calls isn’t going away. At the same time, hackers are always looking for ways to access your confidential information.
If you’re a BE6K or BE7K user, you’ll need Cisco Expressway to extend video capabilities and content sharing both for remote workers and external contacts.
With its dual server configuration, each of which can be configured with high availability, Cisco Expressway creates a secure tunnel to only allow the traffic you want to access your collaboration servers.
Cisco Expressway is just one part of the puzzle to enable remote work, though. For a comprehensive list of what technology you need to support a remote workforce, download our free checklist.
