Article Oct 10, 2023 3 min read

Your video meeting data is for your eyes only

Ian Mortimer

Oct 10, 2023 3 min read

Ian Mortimer

In the corporate world, the words “end-to-end encryption” are meant to give us comfort. The comfort of knowing that our precious and often confidential data is secure as it travels back and forth between users and locations.

But what you must also get comfortable with is the idea that the provider of the digital platform (the one you use to exchange that data) is taking equally good care of that data. This begs the question: Do you have to trust them too?

The answer to that is, yes of course, but…you shouldn’t have to.

To explain why I answer this question of trust in this way, we must go back in time to the founding of Pexip and look to the key design principles that made us what we are today.

A truly flexible and adaptable video conferencing software platform

Our video conferencing technology was built with flexibility at its core. We designed a platform that enabled any video conferencing system to communicate with any other, making us a sort of translator between many different video systems. As part of our flexibility mission, we also built a distributed network architecture, which means that the network isn’t managed from one centralized point but rather distributed over nodes that are independent of each other. This creates a more resilient service – if one node goes down, another can take over, and the video call keeps on going.

The real beauty of all this flexibility is that we ended up making virtual software that could be deployed anywhere and in any way that the customer wanted.

But what does that have to do with trust, you ask?

You can deploy Pexip without Pexip

Because of our unique design, anyone can deploy Pexip for video conferencing purposes without Pexip – meaning Pexip never has access to your data. This goes well beyond end-to-end encryption. You are protected even from us. You don’t have to trust us. You have full control.

Simply put, an organization can make its own video conferencing service using Pexip’s software on their own network. Your corporate data remains entirely inaccessible to us. For video service providers that comfort you with their end-to-end encryption promises, you still need to trust that they will manage your data in a responsible way. With Pexip, you don’t have to.

Today, we are operating in a rapidly evolving cyber-threat landscape, and we are seeing an acceleration in the number and sophistication of cyber-attacks on organizations of all types and sizes. This has prompted governments to tighten control, and new regulations are cropping up around the world, particularly when it comes to protecting areas such as critical infrastructure, defense or public services that involve private citizen data.

A move towards greater control of video data

Because of the expanding threat landscape, we see a rising trend among the organizations we serve towards more self-hosted solutions, such as on-premises, private cloud, and air gapped. I believe that these trends will only continue to grow, as more institutions and companies will be compelled to reduce the risks associated with their confidential data. They will need to take steps to maintain control over it and mitigate the risk of it being leaked or exploited.

This is clearly an evolving area and a high priority agenda item in many governments. It is our top priority at Pexip as well, and we are obsessively committed to maintaining the highest privacy and security standards possible. Your data is for you and your eyes only.

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