Longtime lurker, first time poster. I have a very small position in Zoom. The main drawback of Zoom by its critics is that it is not true end to end encryption, but what are the alternatives? Is Teams, WebEx, Skype truly secure? I don’t know. What about the quality of the video? This is anecdotal, but I have a friend in nursing school whose classes now use WebEx. He mentioned its horrible with frequent drops. If Zoom has the same security issues as its competitors, but superior video quality why would corporations and schools switch? They wouldn’t, but if the competitors can prove that they have superior security and privacy compared to Zoom, maybe that might entice a switch.
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Here is the issue: alternative platforms are NOT working (or at least we’ll enough for corporate users). Had a web ex call this morning with no video and still lots of glitches. My ZM video call that just ended had 10+ people from all over globe - clear quality and no glitches. Users in the corporate world want video calls that actually WORK. MGMT doesn’t get in the weeds about security. MGMT tells their IT team to get me a conferencing system that WORKS.
Zoom works. My extremely large enterprise adopted ZM within last month because existing systems (SeeME, WebEx etc) weren’t working. We don’t download the ZM program. We go through a dedicated site to access our ZM calls. I assume our IT fixed/addressed the security issues. Someone mentioned that all enterprise users do this.
Also, the enterprises are the paying customers. It seems the free customers are the ones freaking about security. Can’t have our K-12 class without end to end encryption! ZM loses no revenue if free users for PR reasons aren’t using. Wait until these people/teachers get fed up with systems that don’t work.
Good luck.
Mike
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Is Teams, WebEx, Skype truly secure? I don’t know.
My company uses Teams and WebEx. Our IT people are very security conscious, as are the IT people of the other major companies who depend on MSFT and CSCO products. I am sure they have used their own “White Hat” attackers to test out the security of the products.
I suspect the same hackers who are all over ZM now have tried to penetrate Teams and Webex too. It’s what hackers do, and making a lot of noise about it is what reporters do. And if not before, now for sure folks will be trying to crack Teams and Webex.
The question this begs is, “But why now?”
ZM was an “I think I heard of them” company for a long time until the virus hit. People who really cared about better video were catching on, others where happy enough where they were. ZM’s ability to respond with free or cheap bandwidth to a crisis made them an overnight headline sensation. Any white or black hat hackers who “will get to ZM someday” dropped everything to hit them. Why would they do that? It’s what hackers and security researchers do and reporters make public in the most splashy way. Publicity? Are you the guy who exposed the security flaw in XXX product? You will get offers. “Come work for us at company YYY. How does $300,000 sound? Stock options? Can we use you in a press release?”
Their credibility wasn’t in the spotlight before. Now everybody and their cousin wants to be the person who “proved” something about ZM.
They better get this right. They are on stage and already missed a line or two.
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