Zoom to Put More Focus on Tightening Security and Privacy

Zoom is again in the limelight. But, this time, obviously not for a good reason. With the latest twist and turns of the events Zoom, a video conferencing platform has garnered criticism from all corners. Once known for providing simple, easy to use and seamless video conferencing experience, the latest cases of zoombombing has highlighted that its overnight success in the times of coronavirus crises carries a heavy burden on its security features. Hence, Zoom to put more focus on tightening security and privacy on its platform.

Also Read: How Zoom has Become a Lifeline Amid Coronavirus Crises?

The aim is to prevent the biggest issue of zoombombing where hackers come in between a meeting, take over the shared screen and begin displaying explicit and hate content. The gravity of the issue can be seen from the fact that one of the most high-profile clients, Elon Musk has put a complete ban on the usage of Zoom for both SpaceX and Tesla due to security concerns. Eric Yuan, the CEO and founder of Zoom has said the Wall Street Journal that “I really messed up as CEO, and we need to win their trust back. This kind of thing shouldn’t have happened.”

Due to this, Zoom to put more focus on tightening security and privacy. For the time being, the company has even decided to put every other development work on hold until it is not rectifying the privacy issues. Zoom to put more focus on tightening security and privacy, this is why on 5th April 2020, the company tweeted, “Effective April 5, we are enabling passwords and ​virtual waiting rooms by default ​for our Free Basic and Single Pro users. We strongly encourage all users to implement passwords for all of their meetings …” This means that from now onwards, the waiting room featured would be enabled by default and meeting organiser will have to manually allow members to join the meeting. Apart from that members can join the meeting only if they have the password. This way, Zoom to put more focus on tightening security and privacy.

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Tips to Use Zoom Safely

• Invite members with care. It’s a big no to share the meeting links on social media platforms. Try to send mail or text invitations.
• Limit the screen sharing option. Hosts can manually change the setting to “Host-Only”. 
• Lock the door, once all the members have joined the meeting.
• Use silencer feature where the host can mute some or all participants.
• Cut the chat option. Host can unable the chat text option so that no one can send unwanted textual or visual messages.
• Make sure that all the participants are using the latest version of Zoom so that they can use all the updated options.