The school district my kids attend just announced they will no longer be supporting Zoom meetings for teachers to hold their classes, and that they will be switching to Webex. They said the reason was for “security issues”.
One thing I noticed when helping my kids get setup for their classes is that the zoom session didnt require any authentication to join. It was just a link. Im sure with a little direction each of these meetings could be more secure from an authentication point of view, but the district is switching to webex which is what they have used in the past.
While I do believe this is an over reaction, I do think this will impact Zoom. The question is how much? Zoom is a top 5 position for me, and I’m not selling, but I may not be as aggressive in adding to it right now.
Is anyone else seeing schools or companies take a stance against zoom?
My kids’ teachers were also specifically told they cannot use Zoom for meetings. They’d been using Facebook groups and are now centralizing efforts in Google Classrooms.
It surprised me that they were specifically told to not use Zoom, and I agree that it is an overreaction and, ironically, due to a lack of education on how to configure Zoom, but it is what it is at this point unfortunately.
School district administrators and board members want no part in zoom meetings with teachers & kids potentially being inundated with pornography, and good luck changing their mind or convincing them that it’s actually easy to prevent it.
I use Zoom every day at my company, and we also use MS teams for chat (b/c we were moved off Slack and told to use Teams instead of Zoom chat, which most of us found silly when it happened), but I digress…
Zoom will certainly take a usage hit from the primary education side, but no one knows how big or even if any were paying or free/trial to begin with, so it’s ultimately all conjecture on whether it hits them on their top line, and if so, how much.
This is the problem with fake news. You just create a narrative provide out of context or made up evidence and publish big headlines.
For instance. Context. Here’s how normal encryption works with WebEx.
Media streams flowing from a client to Cisco Webex servers are decrypted after they cross the Cisco Webex firewall. Cisco can then provide network-based recordings that include all media streams for future reference. Cisco Webex then re-encrypts the media stream before sending it to other clients. However, for businesses requiring a higher level of security, Cisco Webex also provides End-to-End encryption.
This is the normal for WebEx. Now Cisco does also have settings for you to go true end to end encryption.
This actually differs from Zoom where normal is end to end encryption and only under certain circumstances, like having older equipment not compatible with the more secure and newer Zoom encryption, or by electing to have Zoom or other third parties interact with your session.
My school is not changing, and I think many that do will eventually switch back. Sure, there are security issues, but those will be resolved quickly. The main thing to keep in mind is that my six year old son knows how to join a zoom meeting, and I can’t figure out how to join a webex meeting.
Also, have you watched the meetings that classes have? Is there a need for tight security when invitations are only going to a small group of six year olds? Maybe for some reasons, but I can’t imagine a lot of people are trying to intercept those videos, umless they want to see something pretty cute.
Nope, We were just told to update to the latest version of Zoom. Our school is very risk averse, if there are any, I trust they would change quickly. Sorry but I have to chuckle when people say that Teams is going to be a beneficiary. Anybody who has tried to use it or the former iteration “Skype for business” knows that would be an uphill battle, the security might be better but the functionality simply isn’t there. So much wasted time trying to get people online. WebEx is better for sure, but the quality and interface pales in comparison to Zoom.
My kids are using google for first day of online live public school classes on Monday, we will see how that goes. I haven’t used it much but have had difficulty even on small calls.
Also, have you watched the meetings that classes have? Is there a need for tight security when invitations are only going to a small group of six year olds? Maybe for some reasons, but I can’t imagine a lot of people are trying to intercept those videos, umless they want to see something pretty cute.
I’m afraid the issue is different.There are organized groups of Zoombashers exchanging ideas on reddit and 4chan, and maybe twitter and facebook in an effort to attack ZM sessions, It boggles the mind to imagine how some folks get their kicks.
Thank you Draj. All meetings today had passwords and a waiting room for all attendees. I think my 6 year old is safe from the nefarious zoombombers who could only get into the meeting if they intercepted the email from the teacher on seesaw. If hackers are tracking teachers emails via seesaw, then they may have a bit too much time on their hands. I’m still baffled why schools are worried about this.
A note from my daughter who teaches at a New Jersey high school and has children in middle school:
"Schools are held liable for any of that nefarious interaction.
They could be sued; so until they can ensure a safe way for everyone, any northeast school district will probably hold off from using Zoom.
NJ has the highest number of lawsuits against school systems than any other state and they usually rule in favor of the parents so if something happens and a kid sees porn or hears curse words, as has been happening, and some parent decides to sue for whatever reason because it was a required class, that’s what they’ll want to avoid. I’m sure once they can get teachers together and meet about it, it will be a good thing but we’re not allowed to zoom, nyc is not allowed to zoom and now Middle school has been holding back on zooming.
So I know it’s good, I’ve used it with (daughter’s name) acting class; schools need a way to understand it.
It just all happened quickly with no training so it might be put into use next year or who knows."