Managing End of Life Operating Systems for your Voice Recording Data

The Challenge With Managing End-of-Life Voice Recording Operating Systems

As a fundamental core compliance necessity, voice recordings should be easy and straightforward to access, however there are multiple challenges associated with this, particularly around when operating systems reach end-of-life and systems need to be decommissioned.

If you are currently running an unsupported operating system or one that is likely to be unsupported soon, you should not only be planning to move to the latest version but starting to make that switch immediately.

The most traditional approach to dealing with operating system or end of life (EOL) software is to simply upgrade the software to a supported version. Modern operating systems such as Windows Server 2016 and 2019 are built on modern software-defined features, contain cloud capabilities, and will be supported well into the 2020s. However, legacy applications may need extensive modifications to run properly or may not be compatible with new operating system versions at all.

Running an operating system that’s EOL creates more security risk exposure than simply running an unpatched operating system. At least, if you’re only missing a patch, you can always roll back the system, install the patch and restart. With EOL, you have no recourse.

• Incompatible software New releases of software have been optimised for the most recent operating systems. With an EOL operating system that you cannot upgrade, you may be forced to continue running older applications. These apps themselves are probably facing their own EOLs, too.
• New vulnerabilities When a vendor stops issuing security patches, your system becomes a sitting duck for hackers, who will quickly start searching the globe for people who continue to operate in this defenseless mode. Using firewalls and anti-malware countermeasures are not enough to protect your servers from attacks that exploit vulnerabilities which cannot be fixed with patching.
• Added expense The operating costs required to maintain and fix bugs on an OS that’s post-EOL can be quite high. In addition, you should estimate the business impact, in dollars, of an outage caused by the EOL OS.
• Compliance challenges Regulatory compliance frameworks usually mandate regular patching.  The audit and certification process for systems in regulated industries like healthcare and finance may prohibit the use of EOL systems.
• Poor performance and reduced reliability Running legacy apps on EOL operating systems leads to performance and reliability issues. Aging systems tend to break down more often than their more up-to-date and patched counterparts. It’s wise to think through the effects of the inevitable downtime that will come with an EOL operating system.

How can Wordwatch help with accessing End-of-Life Voice Recording Systems?

Wordwatch can address the challenge of running legacy call recording platforms on EOL operating systems or indeed an EOL manufacturer version.

By consolidating your legacy call recordings into Wordwatch, you can completely remove the reliance on these outdated and unsupported software versions. Wordwatch will take control of your captured interactions and allow continued access and management to your legacy data. Once your interactions have been migrated into the Wordwatch solution, your legacy infrastructure can be decommissioned and destroyed thus removing the risk of keeping regulated data within these ticking time bombs (out of support systems).

Wordwatch is architected around the latest software standards and practices to ensure that the solution remains evergreen for the entire lifecycle of your interactions. In addition, by consolidating your call recordings into a centralised solution, you can dramatically reduce your server footprint and maintenance overheads.

How we helped a Tier 1 Bank with End-of-Life Challenges

A Tier-1 US Bank had multiple systems deployed across EMEA, AMER and APAC.  Their recording systems had reached end-of-life and were out of support from the vendor. There was also a far greater dilemma for the Bank as Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008 was also EOL and it was mandated that it must be removed from the global infrastructure.

The Bank could not risk trader call data being at the mercy of obsolete end-of-life voice recording systems, and it was therefore paramount the recordings were easily searchable and accessible for the complete retention period to meet increasingly stringent compliance regulations, or risk penalties potentially running into tens of millions of dollars.  For legal reasons, the Bank was also acutely concerned about not manipulating the file format to ensure data integrity and making sure there could be no challenge to the content and originality of the file.

Using Wordwatch, the Bank can now manage, locate and replay all call data from various disparate recording platforms and locations, either on-premise or in the cloud.  As a direct consequence, the were able to fully decommission the original nine separate recording platforms and shed calls dangerously past their official retention date, which deleted over 30% of its cache (amounting to tens of millions of call records) thereby mitigating compliance risk, and significantly cutting storage costs.

If you’re looking to lower your server footprint, remove old operating systems and remove the significant risk they carry, contact us to find out how we can help.