The much-in-demand video conferencing platform, Zoom, as promised, is rolling out end-to-end encryption feature to secure user meetings. Along with it, it has come up with a clutch of new products and push the company's growth.
Zoom had earlier acquired technology start-up Keybase, which specialises in encryption, to enable end-to-end encryption for the video conferencing tool in a bid to improve security and privacy on the platform.
Zoom's initial roll out will be technical preview of E2EE for users. In all, it will be a four-phase E2EE rollout.
Zoom’s E2EE uses the same powerful GCM encryption that users get now in a Zoom meeting. The only difference is where those encryption keys live.
Customers will be required to enable E2EE meetings at the account level and opt-in to E2EE on a per-meeting basis.
When E2EE is enabled for a meeting, users will be able to see a green shield logo in the upper left corner of their meeting screen with a padlock in the middle.
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"Most secure platform"
Zoom meetings are already encrypted. In essence what end to end encryption amounts to is if the video of a zoom meeting is 'scooped up' by an outside element, the data will be scrambled.
“End-to-end encryption is another stride toward making Zoom the most secure communications platform in the world,” said Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan.
As per Zoom, hosts can enable the setting for E2EE at the account, group, and user level and can be locked at the account or group level. All participants must have the setting enabled to join an E2EE meeting. In Phase 1, all meeting participants must join from the Zoom desktop client, mobile app, or Zoom Rooms.
Zoom said in a blogpost: “We’re excited to announce that starting next week, Zoom’s end-to-end encryption (E2EE) offering will be available as a technical preview, which means we’re proactively soliciting feedback from users for the first 30 days".
Some features may not be available
Enabling E2EE, however, will lead to a few features of the platform being disabled.
“Enabling this version of Zoom’s E2EE in your meetings disables certain features, including join before host, cloud recording, streaming, live transcription, Breakout Rooms, polling, 1:1 private chat, and meeting reactions,” Zoom said in its blogpost.
Source: Zoom
