How can you process and store privacy data in your own datacenter, yet run the communications APIs in a cloud SaaS model?

Communications APIs have transformed how solution providers embed alarm, voice or video communication capabilities into their services, making it easier to build solutions and deliver them to customers globally.

Typically, these communications APIs are used with deployments in large public clouds.

However, as the geopolitical environment is changing, the question of where privacy data handled by communications APIs is processed and stored has been actualized. A question increasingly raised by the customers of some solution providers is:

“Where is our privacy data actually processed and stored – and who can access it?”

What is privacy data in a communication workflow?

To understand the question of “where” and “who” above, it’s important to understand what kind of privacy data that flows through a solution built with communications APIs.

In a typical communication workflow, solution providers may handle:

• Names, phone numbers, email addresses, and user identifiers
• Voice call content, recordings, and transcriptions
• Alarm messages, incident notifications, and event-triggered communications
• IP addresses, device identifiers, and network-related data
• Call detail records, including timestamps, duration, and routing information
• Location data tied to users or devices
• Logs and diagnostic data generated by the system
  
  

In many cases, solution providers have to comply with strict requirements that define how and where such data must, or must not, be handled.

Rethink deployment architecture: Combine public cloud with local control

Today, communications APIs offered by the global CPaaS providers are typically delivered through any of the public cloud platforms. This model offers speed, scalability, and ease of integration, but it often comes with limited – or no – possibility for a solution provider building services or applications for its customers to choose its own infrastructure for processing and storing of privacy data.

Traditional hardware-based solutions deployed on own, or customers’, premises, provide processing and storage locally, but often lack the operational efficiency, the speed of getting new innovations to the market, or the usage-based cost model that a cloud-based approach can deliver.

The gap between these two deployment alternatives is where a hybrid model can be an attractive option.

In a hybrid deployment model, the best of the two approaches above is combined and is efficiently addressing the requirements tied to where strict privacy data is handled and who can access it.

A hybrid approach allows solution providers to maintain the benefits of modern communication APIs while also ensuring that sensitive data is processed and stored within their own, controlled environments. Instead of running all communication services through external infrastructure, critical parts of the data flow can remain local – within a private cloud, a private data center or on customer-premises equipment (CPE).

iotcomms.io – communications APIs with the possibility to keep privacy data on own infrastructure

iotcomms.io is – unlike many typical CPaaS providers today – offering its communications APIs with a flexibility in deployment method.

Its hybrid deployment option enables all iotcomms.io’s cloud services (e.g. SIP Core Service, Recording Service, Alarmbridge Service, SIP Mediaserver Service) to be run on a solution provider’s own private infrastructure, but being orchestrated and monitored just like a cloud SaaS.

This means:

• All sensitive privacy data is processed and stored within the provider’s own infrastructure or the environment of their choice
• Storage, logging, and retention policies can be enforced locally
• Operational burden, security patches and service monitoring are taken care of by iotcomms.io
  
  

This approach allows solution providers to ensure they align with the strict privacy requirements of their customers – without giving up the efficiency of the cloud SaaS model.

For solution providers evaluating their current setup and future direction, a couple of questions are becoming increasingly relevant to ask their existing CPaaS providers:

• Where is my customer’s privacy data processed and stored?
• What parts of the communication stack can run in my own environment?
  
  

The answers to these questions are becoming central to winning and retaining customers now and in the time to come.