What a three-day Blitz by Zoom!!!
May 5th - Zoom acquires Keybase
May 6th - Zoom re-approved by the NY City School District
May 7th - Zoom approved by the NY State Attorney Gen who was investigating it.
Talking about improving your image! I just googled ‘What is the largest school district in the country?’ and here’s what I got: New York City Department Of Education is the largest school district in the United States. Putting all this together it’s going to be much harder for smaller school districts to hold out against their teachers and students who want to go back to Zoom. JMHO.
Here are my own pared down and edited copies of the news releases:
May 5, 2020 - Zoom acquires Keybase
Announces goal of developing the most broadly used enterprise end-to-end encryption offering.
We are proud to announce the acquisition of Keybase, another milestone in Zoom’s 90-day plan to further strengthen the security of our video communications platform. Since its launch in 2014, Keybase’s team of exceptional engineers has built a secure messaging and file-sharing service leveraging their deep encryption and security expertise.
We are excited to integrate Keybase’s team into the Zoom family to help us build end-to-end encryption that can reach current Zoom scalability.
We believe this will provide equivalent or better security than existing consumer end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms, but with the video quality and scale that has made Zoom the choice of over 300 million daily meeting participants, including those at some of the world’s largest enterprises.
May 6, 2020 – NYC Dept of Ed re-approved Zoom after having banned it in April
• New York City schools are once again allowed to use Zoom for online learning.
• Zoom made several fixes to address the NYC Dept of Ed’s concerns about privacy and security for students and teachers using the tool.
• Schools and students will now have access to Zoom through a central NYC Dept of Ed account with the necessary privacy and security features automatically enabled, according to a letter from Chancellor Richard A. Carranza to families.
• Zoom worked with the School District to set up a comprehensive district-wide plan and address the district’s concerns.
Zoom agreed to make some changes to address the city’s concerns about privacy and security for students and teachers using the tool.
Schools and students will now have access to a central NYC Department of Education Zoom account with specific data encryption and storage settings that the district requested Zoom implement for all its users.
“Our new agreement with Zoom will give your children another way to connect with their schools, teachers and school staff. We are excited to be able to have another safe and secure option for school communities to use during this unprecedented time,” the Superintendent said in a letter.
There are also new settings to make sure only approved participants and guests can join virtual classrooms, as well as additional controls over each meeting for hosts. Those settings seem designed to discourage “Zoombombing.”
New York City schools started remote learning on March 23, with many teachers turning to Zoom because it was simple to set up and start using. Zoom lifted the 40 minute time limit for K-12 schools in countries affected by the pandemic beginning in early March.
After Zoom was banned, the department directed teachers to use alternative tools like Microsoft Teams and Google Classroom. However, not all were happy about this move: It disrupted the learning process, as teachers had to figure out a brand-new tool while already under the pressures of shifting to remote education.
Schools can continue using Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams if they prefer. Some teachers posted on Twitter to say they were happy to be able to use Zoom again.
May 7, 2020 – NY State Attorney General reached agreement with Zoom
New York Attorney General Letitia James today announced an agreement with Zoom that will provide security protections for more than 200 million users on the platform. New security measures are being put in place to support and protect consumers, students, schools, governments, religious institutions, and private companies using the application for work, education, prayer, and socializing.
After the outbreak of the coronavirus disease, cities and states across the nation began quarantine and social distancing procedures that forced businesses and schools, as well as many social interactions to be moved online. Zoom had a sudden surge in both the volume and sensitivity of data being passed through its network, but the exponential increase in users also exposed security flaws and vulnerabilities in Zoom’s platform and software, and a lack of privacy protections. Attorney General James opened up an investigation into Zoom’s privacy and security practices in March, culminating in today’s agreement.