With the Coronavirus pandemic forcing many businesses to allow employees to work remotely, onlineconferencing services have seen a massive surge in growth, one of them being Zoom.
But Zoom hasn’t had this surge in growth without a large amount of backlash to go along with it. Its track record on security and privacy has been pulled into the spotlight, and some US states have announced investigations into the company, whilst some organisations have prohibited their employees from using it.
As a result, Zoom has now announced some additional security measures that it hopes will resolve at least some of the reported issues. One of the issues is “zoombombing”, whereby an uninvited guest is able to join a meeting room.
Zoom has announced it will turn on passwords and Waiting Rooms by default in order to prevent uninvited guests joining a meeting room. Its statement reads:
We’ve chosen to enable passwords on your meetings and turn on Waiting Rooms by default as additional security enhancements to protect your privacy.
This will mean that users will need to know and enter the password before joining a meeting room, and people will be added to a ‘Waiting Room’ before entering a meeting room, where the host will have to manually admit attendees.
Zoom has sent an email to users notifying them of the changes. The changes take place on 5th April 2020.
