Are My Zoom Video Chats Secure?

Michelle Wilson - July 2, 2020

Well these past few months have been a blast huh? I don’t know about you but we’ve probably cleaned our floors with the ferocity of spring cleaning two dozen times by now (we are running out of things to wipe!). That said if you are like 300 million other users each day you have probably enlisted Zoom to help you stay in touch with your friends and family during our social separation. In fact, much like we did with google, zoom has even started to be used as a verb (i.e. “Do you want to Zoom?”).

Zoom has really been a life line for many during this time. Enabling many of us to do business from the safety of our homes by creating virtual teams that can be scaled easily and efficiently. But just a few months ago you hadn’t even heard of Zoom before, and now that you’ve been using it, you’ve also been hearing about recent security concerns and that has you worried that this lifeline of yours might be cut at any moment.

What Makes Zoom So Great?

Zoom has done for video chats what hotdogs have done for baseball games. Given us an affordable solution to an otherwise expensive alternative. Zoom even offers a way to start free with a software that is feature-rich and includes:

• Intuitive interface with accessibility on any device.
• Easy Screen Sharing
• Up to 1000 participants in a call!
• The Calendar interfaces with outlook and google calendars easily.
• Built in recording options
• Transcription capabilities
• One-on-one messaging.

Zoom is known for it’s easy user interface. Much like apple they pride themselves on being accessible even to the most technophobic amongst us.

But as the pandemic hit, Zoom wasn’t ready for the sudden surge in popularity for it’s service. With more users comes more attention from hackers and scammers and the company was simply not prepared for the security problems that ensued.

What Makes Zoom a Potential Issue?

The ease of use that is the pride of their service also comes with a price. Zooms growing pains have created a plethora of situations that previously were not an issue. Here are some of the issues people have with Zoom.

• Zoombombing – This is when an uninvited caller joins a zoom meting and contaminates the situation with inappropriate behavior, language or even sometimes pornographic material.
• There is a Zoom feature that when enabled turns any users computer into a local server (not good if you value your relationship with your ISP).
• Routing data to Facebook even when users weren’t logged into their accounts.
• Zoom’s apparent confusion over what really constitutes end-to-end encryption.
• An undisclosed number of video meetings have been “mistakenly” routed through China, where they inadvertently landed on Chinese servers.

Many of these problems that have been discussed have since been fixed since coming to light however, it’s not what they know about that is the problem, it’s what they don’t know about.

There are alternatives to Zoom you could explore. Skype is probably the biggest amongst the competitors, along with Facetime and Webex. While Skype has its issues like Zoom, both Facetime and Webex are pretty secure solutions, however capabilities and participant counts are often what you lose in the trade.

In conclusion, every software has its pluses and minuses. You need to examine how much security you need, and whether or not the software meets your feature requirements.

One thing is for sure as we meet this pandemic head on, is that video conferencing is here to stay. As it is it’s next to impossible to meet face to face. But with a little effort and the right software platform for your needs, you can keep video conferencing safe and efficient.