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Zoom releases new version with security, privacy enhancements

After stinging complaints about security issues Zoom Video Communications will release over the next seven days a new version of its conferencing platform as part of a 90-day plan promising to boost privacy and security.

Among the enhancements, Zoom 5.0 adds support for AES 256-bit GCM encryption, which the company says will increase protection for meeting data and resistance against tampering. However, in the future a totally new cryptographic design will be implemented that “greatly reduces risk to Zoom’s system,’ the company says.

“We will earn our customers’ trust and deliver them happiness with our unwavering focus on providing the most secure platform,” CEO Eric S. Yuan said in a statement.

At the beginning of April, as employees of thousands of companies around the world forced to start working from home, reporters and security analysis began looking closely at Zoom and other video and audio conferencing platforms. Many didn’t like what they saw, particularly at Zoom because it was one of the most popular choices of new home-based workers.

That prompted Yaun to acknowledge falling short on security and privacy and promising to will shift all of its software engineering resources over the next three months to focus on trust, safety and privacy issues, as well as conduct a comprehensive product review with third-party experts.

Related:

How to secure Zoom, Webex

 

The first moves made earlier this month included making passwords mandatory for meetings and enabling a Waiting Room — where a host can screen attendees before going live — by default. Zoom 5.0’s new feature set is part of a second wave. In addition to tougher encryption, the changes include

Users may also now opt to have their Zoom Chat notifications not show a snippet of their chat; new non-PMI meetings now have 11-digit IDs for added complexity; and during a meeting, the meeting ID and Invite option have been moved from the main Zoom interface to the Participants menu, making it harder for a user to accidentally share their meeting ID.

 

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