Safe Contactless Communication with Open Source: Meet “Jitsi Meet”

 

Due to the Corona pandemic, the world is once again increasingly concerned with the topic of contactless communication, and the pressure for digitisation is also tangibly intensifying in all aspects of our lives. In May 2020, DAASI International reached out to NGOs and other charitable organisations with a special offer: to provide a managed service for a Jitsi-based communication server free of charge for a whole year. The contact restrictions, which prompted DAASI International to make this offer, stillapply and have in some cases become even stricter since. Thus, DAASI International has decided to extend and expand the original offer.

What Is Jitsi?

Jitsi is an application for secure video communication which consists of multiple open source modules, with Jitsi Videobridge and Jitsi Meet at its core. The latter serves as a tool for video conferences for virtual meetins. Additional features round off the user experience: The intuitively designed user interface allows for screen sharing for presentations, and the integrated chat enables users to share messages – privately or to the whole group. The meetings can be easily be created, the automatically generated individual URLs can be forwarded as invite. In this context, a big advantage of Jitsi is that external users do not need their own account in order to join a meeting. However, by connecting Jitsi to a database, i.e. a LDAP server, members of the organisation are able to authenticate themselves against the internal database in order to be able to open and moderate the meeting rooms. Lastly, every room can be secured with a password.

The Advantages of Jitsi

By using the Jitsi app ( F-Droid), users are able to use Jitsi independent of their respective location and device, which is in itself a significant advantage for companies. Moreover, Jitsi can be used without worries even with high security requirements due to its included encryption technology. Thanks to its open source code it can also be customised to meet any individual requirement.

Many other providers of popular video conferencing applications neglect the topic of data protection. Hence, the poor security standards in this context have often been criticised by the government as well as by the press. The open source code of Jitsi, however, offers transparency. The option of hosting an instance on-premise or by an IT service provider within the EU enables truly GDPR-compliant operation. As a result, Jitsi beats proprietary applications in terms of data security as they often transfer personal data to third countries.

Finally, Jitsi of course has all the advantages inherent to open source: transparency, flexibility, independence, verifiability, sustainability, and affordability as well as a high degree of standard compatibility, which allows for a smooth integration into existing IT environments.

Services Offered by DAASI International

In order to continuously support people in maintaining good communication in times of distance and home office, DAASI International adds Jitsi Meet to their service portfolio.
You can choose between to options for your own Jitsi implementation:

• on-premise or hosted on a server in a German data centre
• via shared use of a multi-client capable system.

The services start at an annual cost of 1,000 EUR for shared use. Academic and institutional organisations benefit from reduced rates. The offer of free hosting in the first year for NGOs and other charitable organisations is still valid and will be extended at least until the end of the pandemic.

The team of DAASI International is happy to assist you with your Jitsi project and advise you on suitable options based on your requirements.

More information on Jitsi you can find on the official Jitsi-website.

For a non-binding first inquiry please use our contact form.