Zoom has recently announced it will be making it’s end-to-end encryption capabilities available to all users, which will enhance the security of both voice and video calls immensely. Zoom’s head of security engineering, Max Krohn, revealed that the first of the four-phase security roll-out will start next week.
Zoom has previously been criticised for only making end-to-end encryption available to paying customers. The latest capabilities will be available to free and paying users and can host up to 200 participants on a Zoom meeting. The first rollout of end-to-end encryption will be part of a ‘technical preview’ where users can provide the company with feedback for the first 30 days. However, in the first phase, many features will not have end-to-end encryption available for them, such as Breakout Rooms, polling, streaming, cloud recording, joining before the host, live transcriptions, 1:1 private chat and meeting reactions.
Zooms end-to-end encryption will be based off the same AES 256-bit GCM encryption which adds an extra level of security to calls. However, the keys are not stored by Zoom themselves, but instead by their China-based engineering team. Zoom’s CEO Eric S. Yuan, belives that “end-to-end encryption is another stride toward making Zoom the most secure communications platform in the world”. He said that “this phase of our E2EE offering provides the same security as existing end-to-end-encrypted messaging platforms, but with the video quality and scale that has made Zoom the communications solution of choice for hundreds of millions of people and the world’s largest enterprises.”
The platforms end-to-end encryption will be available to use next week, and customers must enable end-to-end encryption for their meetings at the account level, and also opt-in to end-to-end encryption every meeting.
