Zoom Video Communications has announced an update of its virtual meeting software, adding encryption and new security controls. The company said the roll-out of the Zoom 5.0 update is an important milestone in the 90-day plan it started to improve security on the platform.
The company also announced that it's passed 300 million daily users, up from 200 million in March.
Zoom is upgrading to the AES 256-bit GCM encryption standard to offer increased protection of meeting data in transit and resistance to tampering. This covers the services Zoom Meeting, Zoom Video Webinar, and Zoom Phone data. The feature will start rolling out this week and is expected to be completed by the end of May.
The update also includes the earlier announced plan to give customers a choice of their data centre region and a new Security icon on the meeting menu bar to highlight the controls available to users. The icon can be used to report suspect users to Zoom for customers who think they may be a victim of 'zoombombing', or uninvited guests in a meeting. Users may also disable the ability for participants to rename themselves.
For education customers, screen sharing defaults to the host only. Education, Basic and single-licence Pro accounts also will have the Waiting Room feature on by default, so a host can keep participants in individual virtual waiting rooms before they are admitted to a meeting. Meeting passwords also will be required by default for most types of customers, while administered accounts can set their own password complexity.
