Zoom plans to roll out strong encryption for its paid customers over privacy concerns

As millions rely on zoom video conferencing to remain socially connected amid the global pandemic, the providers announced as of May 30 to strengthen encryption on video calls for its paying customers. The move comes amid the growing concerns on privacy as many users reported intrusion and hacks by the anonymous entities who made threats, interject racist, anti-gay or anti-Semitic messages that recently drew the attention of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, as per a news agency report. 

Zoom security advisor Alex Stamos was quoted saying that the plan was subject to change and it was not yet clear which, if any, non-profits or other users, such as political dissidents, might qualify for accounts allowing more secure video meetings. Further, Stamos added, that a combination of technological, safety and business factors went into the plan, which drew mixed reactions from privacy advocates.  

Also, the company rolled out nine new privacy and security features in its latest update of Zoom 5 on its official website including the AES 256-bit GCM encryption standard, which offers increased protection of your meeting data in transit and resistance against tampering. The key feature provides confidentiality and integrity assurances on your Zoom Meeting, Zoom Video Webinar, and Zoom Phone data, zoom wrote in the blog post. Further, it introduced Robust host controls to be able to “Report a User” to Zoom via the Security icon. 

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Earlier, as per the reports, Zoom had hired Stamos and other experts after several events of the security failures prompted some of the institutions to ban the technology’s usage. Zoom users started installing Strikeforce’s Privacy Protection Suite, aka GuardedID & MobileTrust, to protect their Zoom video and confidentiality of the information. 

Hackers leveraging the pandemic

“Video conferencing services i.e. Zoom, Webex, Skype, GoToMeeting & join.me have emerged as the defacto-replacement for face-to-face meetings. However, hackers are now targeting these users by leveraging pandemic news articles, emails, phishing, vishing & texting schemes,” Mark L. Kay, CEO of StrikeForce said. However, a spokesperson for zoom revealed in a tech report that Zoom’s approach to end-to-end encryption is a work in progress – everything from draft cryptographic design, which was published last week, would be implemented to safeguard the privacy of the users. He, however, added that the discussions on payable customers and features applicable to the free clients were in discussions. 

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