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An Effective Approach to Communication Resilience

We want to underscore a vital truth: Even with significant investments in continuity planning and infrastructure, no communication solution is immune to unexpected failures.

Whether it’s an internet outage, a severed cable, or a data center affected by severe weather, these disruptions can occur despite our best efforts.

Fortunately, we can report that no TCI customers faced outages during the CrowdStrike incident in late July. This is a testament to the unwavering commitment to communication resilience we share with Mitel, our strategic technology partner.

Communication resilience is especially vital in mission-critical sectors where failures can have devastating consequences:

  • Hospitality and Entertainment – Consider airports that experience service disruptions and challenges communicating with customers during downtime. Handling communication surge events in the aftermath adds to their burden.
  • Healthcare and Emergency Services – Some providers will revert to pen and paper when access to electronic health records and other critical systems is lost. This shift highlights the vital need for uninterrupted communication channels in high-stakes environments.
  • Public Sector Operations – During the CrowdStrike outage, states like Alaska and New Hampshire experienced significant disruptions in emergency services. 911 systems went offline, affecting the public’s ability to get timely help.

The economic impact of outages can be staggering. Insurer Parametrix predicts that the CrowdStrike event alone could cost Fortune 500 companies over $5 billion in direct losses.

The TCI and Mitel Approach to Communication Resilience

These are known challenges for any digitally driven organization. Our shared approach prevents or mitigates failures, outages, and breaches through a comprehensive and multi-faceted strategy:

1. Embracing Hybrid Infrastructure – We believe hybrid infrastructure is essential for ensuring resilience:

  • Cost-Effective Support: Hybrid models accommodate diverse work styles and offer hands-on control over the environment.
  • Built-in Redundancies: Our solutions, with failover capabilities and geo-separated deployments, are designed to minimize the risk of communication downtime.

2. Security as a Core Principle – Security is not an afterthought in our solutions; it’s integrated from the ground up:

  • Vulnerability Intelligence and Secure Application Development: We embed best practices into our processes to ensure robust security.
  • Advanced Encryption: Our products adhere to the latest signaling and media encryption security standards, providing end-to-end protection.
  • Proven Expertise: With years of experience securing communications in multi-vendor environments, our solutions are well-tested and reliable.
  • Software Assurance (SWA): This feature ensures your Mitel solutions remain up-to-date and protected.

3. Compliance and Partnerships – We take pride in our compliance with a wide range of standards:

  • Certifications: Our services and solutions support rigorous standards, including DoD JITC, HIPAA, Dodd-Frank Act, MiFID II, DORA, MaRisk, FedRAMP, and ISO27001.
  • Security Partnerships: We collaborate with leading security firms, such as McAfee, Trend Micro, Check Point, Fortinet, Imprivata, TippingPoint, and IronPort, to provide comprehensive coverage.
  • Multi-Vendor Expertise: Our experience with multi-vendor environments helps map end-to-end security for your communication infrastructure.

Looking Ahead

TCI and Mitel’s engagement with security standards organizations like the Cloud Security Alliance and CIS Benchmark and adherence to IETF RFC recommendations (including TLS 1.3) underscores our commitment to continuous improvement in security and resilience.

While no system can be entirely impervious to failure, our proactive measures in hybrid infrastructure, embedded security, and rigorous compliance frameworks ensure that we are prepared to meet and overcome the challenges of modern communication disruptions.

For those navigating the complex landscape of communication resilience, rest assured that TCI stands ready to support you with solutions designed to keep your operations secure and your communications uninterrupted.

Learn more about how to mitigate digital threats and keep your organization communicating. Contact the TCI experts at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

Check Out This Easy-to-Deploy Game Changer – Your New Virtual Receptionist: Mitel Voice Assist

If excellent customer service is your goal, Mitel has stepped up with the solution you need… their new Voice Assist solution.

Voice Assist is like having a virtual receptionist to help answer basic customer questions, route calls, and deliver personal service without tying up an employee on your team. Voice Assist is a simple application that’s added to your Mitel communication server solution.

If you’re spending too much time helping to route calls to the right person and answering simple questions, Voice Assist can help. If your customers are spending too much time navigating your voice system to find the right person, Voice Assist can help them, too.

Designed for organizations that don’t require a contact center solution, but still need to deliver a professional call experience.

Voice Assist features powerful text-to-speech and speech recognition capabilities for a natural, conversational experience – customers can choose the language and voice they want to hear. Instead of a busy signal or a generic voicemail message, your customers immediately get the assistance they need, and you get the help you need to focus on your primary job while ensuring your customers feel heard and served.

Requires no coding or advanced programming knowledge and is a free add-on for users with a Mitel Software Assurance license.

Although built to be simple and easy to deploy in the cloud, Mitel didn’t leave out sophisticated features like text-to-speech and speech recognition, multilingual support, and full integration with Google Places. That last feature is great for small businesses that use Google Places to advertise their business. It now means that your intelligent auto attendant and Google Places can be linked and synched for a better customer experience.

PDF: Mitel Voice Assist Admin Guide

The Low-code, No-code Future

The communications applications of tomorrow won’t have complex interfaces that require heavy coding skills. They’ll be graphically based, intuitive to use, and require no or minimal coding for customization. This is the direction that system designers are moving in, and Voice Assist is Mitel’s first product to fully leverage this low-code, no-code design.

This means more freedom for small businesses to quickly build the digital customer front door they want. Creating call routes, voice menus, and pre-recorded messages can be easily accomplished through prebuilt templates and a drag-and-drop interface. If your organization is spread out across different geographic regions, Voice Assist’s user interface can be customized to support local languages with the click of a button.

Voice Assist is another example of more value for your money. If you’re not a TCI customer today, now is the perfect time to look at our innovative solutions for your business.

Learn about Mitel Voice Assist and how you can deliver a professional call experience for your customers. Contact TCI today: (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.