Rules Of Engagement

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Agora Leads The Security Conversation Around Real-time Virtual Communication

There’s no doubt that the pandemic experience had a significant role in society’s accelerated embrace of contemporary virtual communication; the boost also raised our collective expectations about the availability, immediacy, and speed of the virtual experience. With a mission to make it possible for everyone to interact with anyone, anytime, anywhere, Agora, an ambitious real-time engagement (RTE) API developer, is making the reality of virtual communication exceed our expectations. The video, voice, and live interactive streaming platform developed by Agora is helping developers deliver rich in-app experiences that include embedded voice and video chat, real-time recording, interactive live streaming, and real-time messaging. With a network of 200 globally distributed data centers and a presence in 100 countries, their solutions power over 500 billion minutes of global communication a month.

Agora’s platform-as-a-service technology supports multiple industries, including education, future of work, media and entertainment, retail, telehealth, live audio streaming, and gaming. “That means there’s an expectation across industries to assure the integrity, privacy and security of that communication on a global scale while understanding supporting localized and regional regulatory compliance in those areas,” said Roger Hale, the company’s chief security officer

The company is bringing together a common denominator of multinational, regional, and local cloud providers to manage that global presence. They are also building a unified controls framework of integrity, security, and privacy policies and procedures that will extend across GDPR countries, CCPA in California, and even China’s privacy requirements. “We’ll be able to provide that as a holistic service across Agora and our customer base to assure the integrity of their data and the integrity of the services they take from us.”

While it might appear more convenient for Agora to depend exclusively on large cloud providers to cover the world, a closer look reveals that a mix of large, local and regional providers can better serve customers in parts of the world where communication isn’t ideal. The ‘think globally, act locally’ approach resulted in a truly diverse global supplier ecosystem.

“Our partner system is really exciting,” Hale said. The Extensions Marketplace enables Agora customers to easily find and integrate powerful, fun, and interactive features into their real-time apps. The marketplace helps customers increase speed to market by eliminating time Content Template consuming activities like negotiating with vendors, coding one-off integrations, and searching for complementary RTE technology services.

The extensive array of extensions and unique features available through the marketplace makes it easy for anyone, from an enterprise to an individual developer, to create the apps of their dreams. As Hale put it, “It gives our customers an opportunity to create better and more uniquely-focused applications that give them a differentiator and an advantage within their industry and market.”

Partner participants are thoroughly validated to ensure that their security practices meet Agora’s security and privacy posture, so the extensions they offer in the marketplace are properly secure. “This is how we allow our customers to vote with their checkbooks on the value of the apps on the marketplace.”

Agora manages the communication platform, unlike other companies that provide encrypted communication that may be subject to exploitation across the public Internet. “We control that communication on our network and our systems,” Hale stressed.

A software-defined real-time network is a key component of the platform that allows Agora to monitor operating systems. “If there are servers in a data center where there’s no cloud offering, our services, protections, and monitoring cross that,” he said.

Developers face unique security risks, and Agora is there to provide a high level of service and protection while meeting regulatory controls. For example, some have responsibilities around the FTC’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule but also need to be able to provide RTE technologies, so Agora supports them as well.

Assuring data integrity and consistent data delivery coupled with innovative tools enables developers to create apps with the data protection their customers need. There are several levels of data protection that their customers can choose based on the clientele and industry they serve.

Because developers sell the apps, they build with Agora’s products and services to the companies that make the equipment that their consumer’s demand, the opportunities for criminals are vast. Take gaming, which requires payment via credit card, and create what Hale referred to as “that incredible attack surface,” for which the gaming industry and the developers they engage with have tremendous responsibility for.

“We provide a platform that gives them the tools to provide the right level of access control management,” Hale affirmed.

This month, Agora’s RTE2022, real-time engagement conference will connect the most innovative technologies, tools, and people in real-time virtual communication. “Innovation is embedded into our mission to make RTE indigenous, allowing everyone to interact with Content Template everyone anytime and anywhere,” Hale said. “This is the conference where we can look at what we’re doing today, and know what we’ll need to do tomorrow, so please come join us.”