Let Zoom Fix Its Issues Before Abandoning It

Zoom is going through growing pains as organizations ban its use due to security issues, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to abandon the platform.

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With millions of people working out of their homes due to COVID-19, videoconferencing has exploded in popularity, with platforms like Zoom grabbing most of the attention.

However, not all of Zoom’s news coverage has been positive, as the company has been hammered for security flaws and what some call a lack of transparency.

Security loopholes allowed malicious actors and trolls to hijack meetings, leading many K-12 school departments and other organizations to ban the platform.

According to news reports, the list of organizations that have banned Zoom continues to grow even as the company works to fix those issues and CEO Eric Yuan makes an apology tour with the media.

Google, SpaceX, Smart Communications, NASA, the U.S. Senate Taiwan, New York City’s Department of Education, the German Foreign Ministry and the Australian Defense Force have either banned Zoom or urge members to use another platform.

According to Fast Company, some of these security issues were highlighted before the coronavirus-induced uptick in users. Regardless, the company has issued some fixes and halted non-security features as it works on encryption.

From Yuan’s earliest engineering work on Zoom, the company has focused its efforts on making sure video works in every circumstance, especially with mobile and low-bandwidth environments, says Janine Pelosi, Zoom’s chief marketing officer. Zoom hasn’t buckled under the strain of new users, and its architecture has made it resilient to high levels of use. But Pelosi adds that the company is working rapidly to reset and shift to deal with the flood of users who have no technical resources and don’t come from a place where corporate security practices predominate. “People weren’t putting their meeting IDs in Twitter before this,” she notes.

Zoom has shown its commitment by rapidly overhauling security settings, including making passwords mandatory on free and single-user paid accounts and adding a Security button in its app just days ago that consolidated a number of options to help control public meetings and adding new ones.

The question still arises, though: Have Zoom’s sloppy work outside of video dependability, bad choices, weak disclosure, and resistance to acknowledge flaws in its approach up until several days ago endangered its future even as it’s accumulated massive numbers of new free and paid users? Will existing alternatives, such as Cisco’s Webex (with substantially the same features) or Microsoft Teams (already in wide use in business and education), start to absorb the user base?

For AV integrators who sell conferencing technology, these questions may come up, especially if that customer is in education or government.

Zoom is having some growing pains, but the company and Yuan appear to be on the right track after forming security councils and key security hires. It’s not time to abandon the company, but you should make sure the devices and technology you sell don’t only integrate with Zoom.

There are many other conferencing solutions out there, like BlueJeans, Cisco WebEx, Microsoft Teams and others that integrate with a variety of devices and software.

That said, it’s not time to give up on Zoom. Let Yuan, the company and the court of public opinion work out these issues before doing anything drastic.

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