Will desktop video conferencing replace room-based video conferencing?

Research shows that room-based video conferencing is much more common than its desktop counterpart.

According to the May 2011 InformationWeek Desktop Video Conferencing Survey, 34% of respondents had desktop video conferencing system deployed with an extra 10% saying they were planning to do the same over the following 12 months. The same poll showed that 78% of the respondents had already implemented a room-based video conferencing system, even though these are usually more expensive and difficult to use.

Still, desktop video conferencing adoption seems to be growing, and could, in a near future, take over room-based video conferencing.

Room-based video conferencing is tied to management and employee training. It’s great and very important to have a room where one can have a meeting with a possible partner or a client through video, or a place where employees can attend seminars without having to leave their office.

But desktop video conferencing, which can be deployed on every computer without the need of a specific space, can be very useful in a working environment and increase productivity substantially. By deploying and implementing a unified communications system, which includes desktop video conferencing, collaboration among employees and between employees and management will increase considerably.

When asked the question “Why is your company using or evaluating desktop video conferencing?” the top answer with the 38% of the responses was “to improve collaboration among employees”, followed by “to reduce travel costs” with 31% and “to improve collaboration with partners and customers.”

The main reason for the disparity between room-based and desktop video conferencing is because the latter was always considered to lack the video quality of the first, which is partially true. Today, this gap is closing especially due to technological developments. Solution vendors have realized that in order to sell video conferencing systems they need to prioritize image quality while maintaining connection speed.

New solutions available in the market, such as RHUB 6-in-1 web conferencing and remote support appliance, deliver a high quality service which can match any room-based video conferencing system, being easier to use and deploy while being cheaper to implement, requiring little to no maintenance.

As technology progresses and vendors come up with new solutions it is only expected that not only desktop video conferencing will catch up with room-based video conferencing, it will surpass it.

New Research shows that Video Conferencing setups make hacking easy

According to Rapid7, a provider of security risk intelligence solutions, thousands of video conferencing systems raise several security concerns and are vulnerable to hacking.

These security issues might become a big problem for companies that don’t take their video conferencing security serious since many remote conferences take place in corporate meeting rooms, where sensible information is discussed. 

According to HD Moore, Rapid7 CSO and Chief Architect, “many of these [video conferencing systems] are naked on the internet.” He estimates that over 150,000 systems on the internet can be easily hacked into allowing intruders to listen to private conversations using the system’s microphone and watching the conference through the computer cameras.  

In an interview, Moore has said that the biggest mistakes in corporate video conferencing are the auto-answer feature and deploying a video conference without being firewall protected. Moore also added that while many systems are protected behind a firewall, many of them cannot handle the H.323 protocol, leaving the system accessible to intruders.

Moore, while researching for systems vulnerabilities, has accessed video conferences which took place at boardrooms as well as law offices, venture capital firms and research facilities.

“Often, where video conferencing equipment gets located are the same places where the most sensitive meetings take place,” said Mike Tuchen, Chief Executive of Rapid7.   

According to both Moore and Tuchen, stopping such attacks isn’t hard though it requires some technical know-how. One of the easiest ways of preventing spying is by disabling the auto-answer feature, they explained.

Another way might be looking for equipment that offers good security solutions and that it is easy to use and to monitor. With fully implemented security solutions, video conferencing appliances like RHUB Web conferencing appliance solution fully secure video conferencing meetings by barricading them behind firewalls and by using both SSL and proprietary encryptions.