Comcast's customer service used to be the stuff of distraught legend. The company put a lot of effort into making it better. But then something went wrong with my cable service.

Comcast's customer service used to be the stuff of distraught legend. The company put a lot of effort into making it better. But then something went wrong with my cable service.

DevOps journey orchestration gets 'teams engaged with Agile and DevOps, removing the natural resistance and fear of change, and then supports the team through the changes while maintaining productivity.'

Sangoma has concluded a thorough investigation into a misconfiguration of an internal, long unused customer support ticketing system historically used by Sangoma’s support and engineering departments to resolve IT and customer issues. As part of that investigation, we were obliged to comply with applicable legal requirements and procedures and have reported the incident to the appropriate legal authorities: we are now permitted to make this public.

While the investigation found no malicious use, we want to be transparent about this incident with all customers and reassure them that we are taking it very seriously and holding ourselves accountable.

Our investigation has determined that a permission change made to the two deprecated Jira projects, by the IT team, on Nov 12 2019 allowed public read only exposure of the data. In specific search phrases, the contents of those Jira tickets were being offered as part of search engine results. Individuals would have been able to click on the search result and enter into a specific Jira ticket offered by the search engine.

We became aware of the issue on Dec 17, 2019 and, on the same day, Sangoma IT remediated the configuration to restrict the jira access and prevent any further unauthorized access. This issue was specific to two internal deprecated Jira projects: INFRA & SIP, that have NOT been in-use for a number of years and were only used for internal support cases by IT and Cloud Services support teams.

Our investigation confirmed that substantially all of the records did not contain any personal or CPNI information in accordance with our standard practices. After reviewing the contents of all Sangoma INFRA & SIP Tickets that were exposed to the internet and cross referenced the tickets to the access logs, we determined that there were two cases of possible exposure. None of the data exposed was material and we informed our affected customers.

We are committed to the privacy and security of our customers and are taking action to prevent future occurrences of this issue. We have updated our procedures to make sure that such changes do not occur in the future: alerts will be triggered on configuration changes along with scheduled period reviews of public facing systems.

We want to sincerely apologize and reassure our customers that we are taking it seriously and working diligently to make sure that such mistakes do not happen again.

The post Access Misconfiguration of Internal Legacy Customer Support Ticketing System appeared first on Sangoma.

RobbinHood ransomware deploys novel technique to make sure it can encrypt files without being interrupted.

RobbinHood ransomware deploys novel technique to make sure it can encrypt files without being interrupted.

LF Energy and Alliander Announce a program -- GXF -- to securely manage the modern electrical grid's Industrial Internet of Things.

Read before spending your money!

Read before spending your money!

Shadow IT has been a management concern for some time, and now shadow IoT lurks

The ability to capture leads and close a sale is firmly wrapped up in seamless communication through your dealership’s website, CRM, and business phone system; contact information should be prevalent. Even after a sale, customer retention and loyalty is based on the quality of customer satisfaction, which again, comes down to communications. Investing in solutions that enable seamless and effective communications is vital in this competitive industry, and the need spans beyond a traditional phone system.

The Switchvox Unified Communications (UC) system has been used in auto dealerships for years, benefiting every department’s unique communication needs. Switchvox boasts advanced and flexible features that work well across multiple locations, so multi-site dealerships can seamlessly connect to the same solution. Implementation of Switchvox is simple and can be done with little or no IT staff. Here is a quick look at the features within Switchvox that can help your auto dealership:

• Mobility: Switchvox Mobile enables the sales team to access every Switchvox feature and capability via their desktop or smartphone (iPhone or Android), including call controls (transfer, conference, send to voicemail), call recording, visual voicemail, and more. The customer only sees the dealership’s caller ID information, which keeps the salesperson’s personal contact information private, and also allows the brand of the dealership to be persistent in all customer communications
• CRM Integration: The Extend API lets users build integrations with CRM applications, which triggers “screen-pops” displaying important caller information, location, and notes from previous interactions. Salesforce CRM integration is available out of the box.
• Call Control Interface: The Switchboard allows the receptionist to have a call control interface on their desktop. This web-based application  increases worker efficiency by allowing the receptionist to see who is or is not on the phone, click-to-dial, transfer, and instant message any employee, regardless of location
• Reporting: You can schedule call reports to be automatically emailed to track marketing campaigns or the productivity of your departments. See how long customers were on hold, with whom they spoke, and use high and low call periods to properly staff during the day
• Call Queues: These allow you to control the call flow of the dealerships. Queues enable calls to be delivered to the correct department or employee with little or no staff interaction. Queues ensure your customers are taken care of as quickly as possible based on your staffing levels.
• Call Recording: Managers have the ability to record calls to ensure that employees are handling situations as they were trained to do
• Personalized Call Rules: Users have the flexibility to set which of their phones ring, in what order, and what time of day. They can set up calls to automatically ring to their desk during work hours, to their mobile phones after hours, or to go straight to voicemail when needed. You can also have your status determine how your calls get routed so you have quick and dynamic control over you calls
• Training Tools: Switchvox provides several easy-to-use, yet powerful training tools, such as listening in on calls, being able to speak to the employee over the phone without the customer being able to hear, and helping troublesome calls by “barging in”
• Reduced Cost: Switchvox combines the communications of all your dealership locations into one. This can allow all incoming call traffic to be handled by one receptionist, instead of paying unnecessary salaries to several. Also, due to increased visibility, more locations can be run with fewer managers. Dealerships that implement Switchvox save an average of 40-60% on their monthly communications costs

Unified Communications is expanding and streamlining the way auto dealerships communicate- from the beginning of the sale to ongoing customer care. Access our Switchvox for Auto Dealerships guide for a detailed overview of every Switchvox feature your dealership can benefit from.

The post Must-Have Unified Communications Features for Auto Dealerships appeared first on Sangoma.

Opinion: It was incompetence, not politics, that led to the Iowa caucus app misfiring. Above all, it was poor programming. Open-source software techniques could have prevented this blunder.

iPhone feeling sluggish? Here's how to reset the RAM and speed it up. And this works for all iPhone models, whether they have Touch ID or Face ID.

iPhone feeling sluggish? Here's how to reset the RAM and speed it up. And this works for all iPhone models, whether they have Touch ID or Face ID.

Nomad makes some fantastic Horween leather cases designed to protect your phone in style while Moment has lenses to take your camera experience to the next level. The combination of both results in the best cases for smartphones.

Windows is powerful, but it often arrives on your PC as a bloated, crapware-filled mess. Here's how to remove the bloatware and clean it up, without making things worse with more crapware-filled helper apps.

Windows is powerful, but it often arrives on your PC as a bloated, crapware-filled mess. Here's how to remove the bloatware and clean it up, without making things worse with more crapware-filled helper apps.

Who'da thought hiding passwords behind asterisks as you entered the characters could be a security problem?

Mobile World Congress is coming later this month, and there are plenty of leaks and rumors indicating improved camera technology, dual displays, and folding displays are the focus in 2020. 5G is also rolling out from carriers, so let's get ready to ride.

SIP trunking is growing. According to the Eastern Management Group, the global SIP trunking market was approximately valued at $14.4 billion in 2018 and projected to grow 7.6% annually through 2020. The predominant reason for this is the growth of IP phone systems, which need to be connected to SIP Trunks.

But if you are a business, what types of SIP trunks should you buy – retail or wholesale?

Retail SIP trunks are designed for small to mid-sized businesses and are bought from a provider in much the same manner as the business buys other forms of telephony. Pricing is typically calculated per line, per month.

Wholesale SIP trunks are intended for service providers and large enterprises that consume large amounts of telephony service, either internally or as a provider. There is often a minimum commitment per month (in the form of usage) that you’d be required to sign up for, and after that, it would be metered.  In other words, this is for organizations that utilize a lot of minutes, or intend to resell into the retail business.

There are many other considerations as well, including SMS, fax, and fraud protection. Please read our whitepaper for more information.

Sangoma offers both retail SIP trunking and wholesale SIP trunking.

The post The Difference Between Retail and Wholesale SIP Trunking appeared first on Sangoma.