--- title: A Secure Connection Is Not a Verified Participant description: Security, Cives, Civis, Webex, Courts for Webex, legislate for webex image: https://cives.ai/hubfs/Securepic.png --- [Skip to the main content.](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/a-secure-connection-is-not-a-verified-participant#main-content) [![Cives](https://cives.ai/hs-fs/hubfs/image%20Inverted.png?width=762&height=732&name=image%20Inverted.png "Cives")](https://cives.ai) [![Cives](https://cives.ai/hs-fs/hubfs/Cives%20Oringal%20Transparent.png?width=762&height=732&name=Cives%20Oringal%20Transparent.png "Cives")](https://cives.ai) - [Home](https://cives.ai) - [Platform](https://cives.ai/platform-1) - Solutions - [Courts](https://cives.ai/courts-for-webex) - [Legislate](https://cives.ai/legislate-for-webex) - [GovConnect](https://cives.ai/govconnect) - [Boardrooms](https://cives.ai/boardrooms-for-webex) - [Viritual Visits](https://cives.ai/virtual-visits-for-webex) - [VRConnect](https://cives.ai/showrooms) - [Resources](https://cives.ai/resources) - [Blog](https://cives.ai/bloginsights) - [Contact](https://cives.ai/contact-us) - [About](https://cives.ai/about-us) Search [Request Demo](https://cives.ai/scheduledemo) [Cives Stream](https://video.cives.ai/guest) Toggle Menu Search Toggle Menu [Request Demo](https://cives.ai/scheduledemo) [Cives Stream](https://video.cives.ai/guest) - [Home](https://cives.ai) - [Platform](https://cives.ai/platform-1) - Solutions - [Courts](https://cives.ai/courts-for-webex) - [Legislate](https://cives.ai/legislate-for-webex) - [GovConnect](https://cives.ai/govconnect) - [Boardrooms](https://cives.ai/boardrooms-for-webex) - [Viritual Visits](https://cives.ai/virtual-visits-for-webex) - [VRConnect](https://cives.ai/showrooms) - [Resources](https://cives.ai/resources) - [Blog](https://cives.ai/bloginsights) - [Contact](https://cives.ai/contact-us) - [About](https://cives.ai/about-us) - [Privacy Policy](https://cives.ai/privacy) - [Sustainability Policy](https://cives.ai/privacy-1) - [EULA](https://cives.ai/eula) - [Information Security Policy](https://cives.ai/eula-0) - [Management System Policy](https://cives.ai/eula-0-0) Subscribe to our newsletter for invaluable insights directly from our worldwide customer community. ##### Column Headline - Testing 1 - Sub Nav 1 - Sub Nav 2 - Testing 2 - Testing 3 ##### Column Headline - Testing 1 - Sub Nav 1 - Sub Nav 2 - Testing 2 - Testing 3 ##### Column Headline - Testing 1 - Sub Nav 1 - Sub Nav 2 - Testing 2 - Testing 3 ##### Column Headline - Testing 1 - Sub Nav 1 - Sub Nav 2 - Testing 2 - Testing 3 6 min read # A Secure Connection Is Not a Verified Participant [Brian McGlynn](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/author/brian) : Oct 14, 2026, 10:56:49 AM [Courts for Webex](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/tag/courts-for-webex) [GovConnect for Webex](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/tag/govconnect-for-webex) [Legislate for webex](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/tag/legislate-for-webex) [News and Events](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/tag/news-and-events) ![A Secure Connection Is Not a Verified Participant](https://cives.ai/hubfs/Securepic.png) *European Cybersecurity Month 2026: when the meeting is the institution, the meeting is also the attack surface.* Every October, Europe spends a month talking about cybersecurity. This year the campaign focuses on the workplace, and the EU Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) opened it with a figure that should concern every public body: in its 2026 threat landscape, built on more than 8,000 analysed events, **public administration was the most targeted sector, in 32% of cases**. Most of the conversation will be about phishing emails, passwords and ransomware. All of that matters. But for parliaments, courts, councils and boards, there is a question that rarely makes the awareness posters: **When a vote, a hearing or a board decision happens on a screen, how do you know who is really in the room?** For these institutions, a meeting is not a conversation. It is where binding decisions are made. And that makes the meeting itself something worth attacking. **A secure connection is not the same as a verified participant.** Encryption protects what travels over the line. It cannot tell an institution whether the person at the other end should be there. That second question is a matter of procedure, and it is where much of the institutional risk now sits. The threat is no longer hypothetical Three incidents from recent years show how the risk has moved from the server room into the meeting itself. **A fake mayor on the screen.** In June 2022, the mayors of several European capitals held video calls with someone presenting himself as the mayor of Kyiv. One of them completed the whole call without noticing anything wrong and publicised it afterwards. Another cut the call short only when the questions became strange. One city's office later said that, at first, nothing suggested the person on screen was not real. It is still debated whether the impostor used a true deepfake or re-edited real footage. For institutions, that detail matters less than the result: a senior official's identity was borrowed, live, in a channel meant for diplomacy. What finally exposed the impostor was not the technology but a check through a second, trusted channel: the city’s office contacted the Ukrainian embassy, which confirmed with Kyiv that the caller was not the real mayor. **A meeting where everyone was fake except the victim.** In early 2024, a finance employee at the Hong Kong office of a multinational engineering firm joined a video conference with what appeared to be the chief financial officer and several colleagues. All of them were AI-generated, built from publicly available footage. Convinced by the meeting, the employee made 15 transfers worth about US$25 million. **A court that had to close its doors.** In July 2024, ransomware hit the largest trial court in the United States. The court shut down nearly all its network systems to contain the damage, and all 36 courthouses in the county closed for a day. Jury portals, case management and even telephone systems were affected, and filing deadlines had to be extended. The pattern is clear. Attackers no longer only target data. They target **identity, decisions and continuity**, the three things institutional meetings exist to protect. Why institutional meetings are a different kind of target In a company, a compromised meeting usually means a leak or a loss. In an institution, it can mean something harder to repair: **a decision whose legitimacy can be challenged**. - **A vote** is only valid if the people who voted were entitled to vote, and the count can be proven. - **A hearing** is only fair if the witness is who they claim to be, the parties could take part, and the record is complete. - **A board resolution** is only safe if the quorum was real and the minutes match what happened. - **A citizen appointment** is only trustworthy if the citizen knows they are speaking to the real office, and the office knows it is speaking to the real citizen. This is why the usual meeting checklist (strong passwords, a meeting link, perhaps a lobby) is not enough. The question for an institution is not only *can someone get in?* It is also *can we prove, afterwards, who was there, what they saw and what was decided?* The wider threat picture points the same way. ENISA reports that fraud and impersonation were the third most recorded type of financially motivated activity in 2025 (19%), after ransomware and data breaches. It also reports that AI-enabled foreign information manipulation campaigns rose from 41 to 147 in a single year. Public institutions are exposed to both threats: they hold money and data, and their credibility is itself a target. Four questions every institution should be able to answer Cybersecurity for institutional meetings comes down to four questions. If an institution can answer all four with evidence, not assumptions, it is in a strong position. | Question | What can go wrong | What good looks like | | --- | --- | --- | | **1. Who is in the room?** | An impostor joins a session, a hearing or a negotiation, as in the fake-mayor calls. | Verified sign-in through the institution's own identity system, a lobby where a real person admits each participant, and roles that decide who may speak, vote or present. | | **2. Can we prove what happened?** | A vote, a testimony or a resolution is challenged and there is no reliable record. | A complete record of sessions, with a chain of custody showing who joined, when, with which role, and what was recorded. | | **3. Who controls the data?** | Recordings, transcripts and votes sit in places the institution cannot fully see or govern. | A clear choice of where data lives (cloud, on-premise or hybrid) and access limited by role. | | **4. Can we keep working if something fails?** | An attack or outage stops proceedings, as in the closed courthouses. | Web-based access that does not depend on one building's systems, dial-in fallback, and a way to suspend and resume a session properly. |   None of these questions is about technology alone. Each one is about procedure: rules that courts, parliaments and boards already follow in a physical room. The challenge is making sure those rules still hold when part of the room is online. The gap in the rulebook Europe’s main cybersecurity law, the NIS2 Directive, treats central government bodies of any size as essential entities. It also covers regional administrations whose services are judged critical, and lets Member States include local administrations. ENISA reports that 73% of the organisations targeted in its latest analysis are essential or important entities under NIS2. Yet NIS2 leaves out three of the institutions where decisions carry the most weight: **parliaments, the judiciary and central banks**. The directive does not explain why, but their independence from the executive may be part of the reason. This has a practical consequence. Where parliaments and courts fall outside NIS2, the directive does not set the bar for how their hybrid sessions are secured. **Someone still has to set it**: the institution itself, or the ministry or administration that runs its technology. And they need technology that can meet it. That is a responsibility, but also an opportunity. An institution that defines its own standard for identity, records, data control and continuity does not have to wait for an incident to discover where its gaps are. How Cives approaches it Cives was built for institutions where a session has legal weight: parliaments and councils, courts, public offices, boards and correctional facilities. Its starting point is that security in these settings is part of procedure, not an add-on. Here is how the platform's capabilities map to the four questions. | Question | What Cives provides | | --- | --- | | **Who is in the room?** | Single sign-on with the institution's own identity system. Lobbies run by real people and fully controlled waiting rooms, so nobody enters a session unseen. Enhanced role-based access, so a judge, a clerk, a witness, a member or a member of the public each has only the rights their role allows. | | **Can we prove what happened?** | Chain-of-custody reporting on sessions. Secure recording and streaming of proceedings. A central operator console that manages speaking turns, hand raises and votes, so the record reflects procedure rather than a chat window. | | **Who controls the data?** | Deployment in the cloud, on-premise or hybrid, so data can stay where the institution decides. Private side rooms for confidential conversations, such as between a lawyer and a client. | | **Can we keep working?** | A fully web-based platform with no downloads, phone dial-in for participants without video, SIP support for existing room systems, and integration with case-management tools. |   Cives runs on Cisco Webex, which secures the connection itself. But as the fake-mayor calls show, a secure connection cannot tell an institution whether the person invited is who they claim to be. That is a question of procedure, and it is the layer Cives adds: who may enter, in which role, who admits them, and what the record shows afterwards. No platform removes the need for good practice. Training staff, verifying unexpected requests through a second channel and rehearsing what to do if a session is disrupted remain the institution's job. What the right platform does is make the secure way of running a session the default way. Five things to do before October ends Cybersecurity Month is a good moment for a short internal review. Five steps any court, parliament, council or board can take now: 1. **Map your sessions.** List every type of meeting that produces a decision, a vote or a record, and the platform each one runs on. 2. **Test the front door.** Check whether an outsider with a forwarded link could join, and whether someone actually admits each participant. 3. **Check the paper trail.** Pick a past session and try to prove who attended, in which role, and what was decided. If that is hard to do, the record is too weak. 4. **Set a verification rule.** Agree that any doubt about who is on a call, and any unexpected request made in one, especially about money, data or a change of procedure, will be checked through a second, known channel. 5. **Rehearse an interruption.** Decide in advance how a hearing or a vote is suspended and resumed if the connection or the platform fails. This year's campaign reminds us that the strongest layer is human. Secure platforms protect the connection; institutions must also protect the procedure. The human layer works best when the technology underneath already does both. *Cives* is the Latin plural of *civis*, citizen. Every vote, every hearing and every decision belongs to them, and they deserve to know it was made by the right people, in the right way. [Request a demo](https://cives.ai/scheduledemo) or write to [info@cives.ai](mailto:info@cives.ai).     - [Tweet](https://twitter.com/share) [![InfoComm 2026 and the Rise of Civic Digital Infrastructure](https://cives.ai/hubfs/InfocommUS.png)](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/infocomm-2026-and-the-rise-of-civic-digital-infrastructure) #### [InfoComm 2026 and the Rise of Civic Digital Infrastructure](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/infocomm-2026-and-the-rise-of-civic-digital-infrastructure) [Brian McGlynn](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/author/brian) : Jun 18, 2026, 4:15:47 PM InfoComm 2026 opens this week at the Las Vegas Convention Center, gathering the global Pro AV and collaboration industry to debate the future of... [Courts for Webex](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/tag/courts-for-webex) [GovConnect for Webex](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/tag/govconnect-for-webex) [Legislate for webex](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/tag/legislate-for-webex) [Boardrooms for Webex](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/tag/boardrooms-for-webex) [News and Events](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/tag/news-and-events) [Read More](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/infocomm-2026-and-the-rise-of-civic-digital-infrastructure) [![Network X 2026: From Infrastructure to Institutions](https://cives.ai/hubfs/NetworkX.png)](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/network-x-2026-from-infrastructure-to-institutions) #### [Network X 2026: From Infrastructure to Institutions](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/network-x-2026-from-infrastructure-to-institutions) [Brian McGlynn](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/author/brian) : Oct 6, 2026, 11:23:02 AM Why the next return on network investment will come from the services built on top of it [Courts for Webex](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/tag/courts-for-webex) [Legislate for webex](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/tag/legislate-for-webex) [News and Events](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/tag/news-and-events) [Read More](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/network-x-2026-from-infrastructure-to-institutions) [![How Cives Is Redefining Government Collaboration on Cisco Webex](https://cives.ai/hubfs/CL.png)](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/how-cives-is-redefining-government-collaboration-on-cisco-webex) #### [How Cives Is Redefining Government Collaboration on Cisco Webex](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/how-cives-is-redefining-government-collaboration-on-cisco-webex) [Brian McGlynn](https://cives.ai/bloginsights/author/brian) : Jun 2, 2026, 11:41:33 AM This week in Las Vegas, Cisco Live 2026 brings together thousands of technology leaders to debate the future of intelligent infrastructure,... 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