Big UC News from Microsoft, Meta, Zoom, Slack, and Twilio

“I take responsibility for those decisions, as well as the difficult decision to do this layoff.”   

Talia Luna Fischer had recently been promoted to Growth Account Executive before being laid off. 

Vulnerabilities Uncovered in Teams and Slack 

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have published their findings on the lack of adequate security features in Microsoft Teams’ and Slack’s applications.   

The paper, titled “Experimental Security Analysis of the App Model in Business Collaboration Platforms”, demonstrates how third-party apps can be used to control workplace tools.   

Teams and Slack were both found to have inadequate default settings that allow users to install apps for whole workspaces. Researchers also showed that they lack the necessary coding reviews in their apps. Current permissions enable outsiders to hijack user messaging and third-party apps, as well as access private channels with sensitive content.   

In the introduction to its report, researchers outlined their key findings: “By examining each interaction method between BCP (Business Collaboration Platform) apps and users, we establish that this two-level access control system does not adequately confine third-party application behaviour.   

“Concretely, we have discovered that the BCP access control system violates two standard security principles: least privilege and complete mediation.

“This allows malicious apps to escalate their privilege and violate the confidentiality and integrity of private chat messages and third-party resources connected to BCPs.”   

In order to locate the security weaknesses in Teams and Slack, the researchers launched a number of controlled attacks, which uncovered a worrying range of ways to exploit these vulnerabilities.   

Microsoft and Zoom UCaaS Market Shares Grow 40% 

Synergy Research Group’s analysis of new Q2 data shows Microsoft and Zoom have grown their UCaaS market share by 40% this year.   

As a result, Microsoft and Google are now level-pegging with around a 10% total share of the market.   

The marketplace itself has increased by 20% this year, which suggests a huge improvement for both companies compared with their pre-pandemic market shares in 2019.   

Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group’s founder and Chief Analyst, said: “Across all segments, the Covid pandemic helped to accelerate the transition away from on-premise PBX and towards UCaaS.   

“This provided a big boost to specialist UCaaS vendors, with RingCentral being strong across the board, while Microsoft does particularly well in the mid-market and Zoom is the main challenger in large enterprises.   

“As the UCaaS boom continues, one interesting recent development has been the rise of so-called BYOC (Bring Your Own Carrier) solutions.   

“BYOC UCaaS enables enterprises to utilize their existing UCaaS or Hosted PBX investments within a collaboration platform, without the need of ripping and replacing what is currently deployed.   

“We forecast strong growth for both UCaaS & BYOC UCaaS over the next five years.”

The subscriber base for RingCentral has also grown by 24% in Q2, allowing it to maintain its market share of around 21%.