CRES roll out: any advice?

[johnsmith1000]

I have a client who is getting ready to roll out CRES. Any suggestions from those who've gone down this path already on things that worked or not? Including suggestions on user training and education?

Thanks.


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[Ken Stieers]

Hey John,

A couple of questions: 

Are they rolling out the Outlook plugin?  How are they doing the rollout?  There are some deployment niceties that I worked out with TAC and posted in this thread.  (https://supportforums.cisco.com/thread/2223866?tstart=0).   And there's another note: if you're using CRES to mail out the config the domains can't be set up for TLS in CRES...

I only recently worked through the Outlook plugin deployment issues, we hadn't deployed it before and are still working on whether we want to or not...  Previously we just had the users add something to the subject line, then used a content rule to clean it up before sending it to be encrypted.   

Our biggest issue has been the blowback we get about the hoops you have to jump through to open an envelope. 

And then there's the fact that our users don't seem to ever read any documentation, or FAQ, or help notes, or anything, so they forget we have it, they forget how to use it, they forget about the process the recipient has to use, and then the complaints about the hoops start again...

If I were doing it fresh, I'd deploy the plugin using SCCM, and write up a doc that users can send to their recipents...

Ken

[johnsmith1000]

Thanks Ken. We have been actually debating the use of the plug-in and after considering some other options, we finally decided we should use it. I have been following up the other thread you mentioned regarding 7.3. It's been helpful.

With plug-in 7.3, being able to consistently use the same BCE style activation across desktops and mobile devices makes the rollout and user training a bit simpler.

Yes, I am concenred about the usability and users not paying attention to the docs/etc. But if we really need to add some level of security to our external emal communication (which I know we need to) and the alternatives are asking users to learn PGP or PKI, I think we should put up with hoops about CRES! At least in this case the complains are typically much simpler to answer/resolve:-)

John