Zoom claims to focus on recent concerns as it announces Zoom 5.0, a milestone in a 90-day plan to proactively identify, address and enhance the security and privacy capabilities of the conferencing platform.
The 5.0 update adds support for AES 256-bit GCM encryption, increasing protection for meeting data and resistance against tampering. The standard takes effect once all accounts are enabled with GCM. In addition admins get data routing control, meaning they can choose the datacentre region account-hosted meetings and webinars use for real-time traffic at the account, group or user level. This includes any datacentres connected to HTTP Tunnel servers, as well as Zoom Conference Room Connectors and gateways.
Users can access security controls more easily. Whereas previously such features were accessible throughout the meeting menus, Zoom 5.0 groups them together under a Security icon in the meeting menu bar at the host interface. Hosts can also "Report a User" to Zoom via the Security icon, and can disable the ability for participants to rename themselves. For education customers, screen sharing defaults to the host only.
The Waiting Room, a feature for keeping participants in individual virtual meeting rooms before admitting them to a meeting, is on by default for education. All hosts in Basic and single-license Pro accounts can turn on the Waiting Room while the meeting is already in progress, while Meeting passwords is on by default in all Basic, single-license Pro and K-12 customers. Passwords are set by default for all users accessing cloud recordings, aside from the meeting host, and require a complex password. Account admins can define password complexity in administered accounts.
Zoom 5.0 adds a new data structure for larger organisations for the linking of contacts across multiple accounts, allowing users to easily and securely search and find meetings, chat and phone contacts. Users can opt to have Zoom Chat notifications not show a chat snippet, and new non-PMI meetings have 11-digit IDs for added complexity. Finally, the Invite option has been moved to the Participants menu, making it harder for users to share their meeting ID.
Many of the above mentioned features are available now, with the Report a User and GCM encryption support to follow in May 2020.
Go Zoom 5.0
