- What's up, guys? Pete Moriarty here.
I am covering some of Zoom's security exploits,
what they mean for you,
and if you are a small business owner
and you're currently using Zoom,
why you might consider using Google Meet instead.
Now, a pretty interesting article came out with CNET
that was passed on to me,
which is basically a list of every single Zoom
security vulnerability (laughs)
Since basically the beginning of time,
which is pretty damn crazy.
And not the beginning of time, beginning of time,
I mean, like since the last few weeks
and month of Zoom bursting into the popularity,
(murmurs) their business
and everyone's seemingly using Zoom for working at home.
And so I wanna kinda cover off like what some of these are,
which ones you need to be concerned about
and of course, like, look, we're a Google company.
I'm not trying to like anti Zoom you here,
but I wanna share why you might consider
switching to Google Meet for your organization
instead of Zoom,
because there are some serious concerns there.
Now Zoom got really popular,
not only because it is great to use
for it's amazing gallery view,
and everyone's seeing each other at the same time,
but they really nailed setting up simple meetings
for businesses and for personal use as well.
They've got URL based meeting sharing,
which means that you can just share that URL
and anyone can basically jump on that and jump straight in,
super convenient.
There aren't really any kinda logins needed,
you just kinda boom it's open
and then you're good to go.
There is a small download required
from the browser onto your computer.
So that's one small thing that you got to get set up,
but apart from that Zoom's pretty darn convenient.
They've also got a number of really useful tools
which make it easy for business owners,
like screen-sharing, being able to record,
and there's some other features in the pro version,
like things like breakout rooms
and being able to run webinars as well
as you pay for more and more on their different plans.
Zoom got really popular because,
well, it was platform agnostic.
It works across different devices,
works on the mobile as well,
and for the most part,
apart from what used to be a 45 minute limit
on free meetings,
it was pretty darn easy for anyone to jump in
and hold video meetings,
no matter what platform you're using inside your business,
and no matter what devices you're using.
Now, one of the reasons that Google Meet
really missed the boat with catching up to Zoom
and Zoom have really taken off,
is Google have been dogged by the ghost of Google Hangouts.
They originally had poor quality,
everything was running in the browser,
so they didn't quite have the same compression available
for Skype or other desktop based apps
that were able to crunch the video a little bit better.
And so Hangouts got this reputation of being slow
or not great quality
and the interface wasn't really that nice as well.
They used to have a clunky system of having to dial
instead of just being able to join
a persistent meeting room.
And that really made things challenging.
And so Zoom took off where Hangouts
has kind of lagged behind.
Now, Google had been building it out in the background.
You've got things like URL based sharing,
you've got recording,
you've got the ability to have multiple views
with everyone on the same screen at the same time,
but Google haven't really reached that level
of popularity for everyone like Zoom has.
And so, unfortunately,
Google have been still a little bit left behind
in the meeting space
and even though they're getting
millions and millions of people signing up to Google Meet
and using it more and more
within the Google Suite ecosystem,
well, it's not quite got the mainstream popularity
that Zoom has.
Issues with Zoom first started popping up
when people were Zoom-bombing.
Now, what does Zoom-bombing mean?
Well, Zoom-bombing actually means that
you're jumping into a random Zoom room
and actually busting in on someone's meeting.
Now, there's a key difference
between how Google handles this and Zoom handles this.
Basically, if you've got the code with Zoom,
anyone can jump in and no one has to allow you
into a meeting.
It makes it really convenient,
but the downside is if someone guesses your room code,
then they can jump straight into your meeting.
Now with Google Meet,
Google actually have to allow each person
to join a meeting unless they're within your company
or unless they have been specifically invited
to the meeting.
One of the great things about Google
is when you invite someone via Google calendar invite,
they're automatically authorized to join the meeting.
So in a business setting,
you're probably going to be scheduling meetings
by your calendar,
and that works beautifully.
Even if you share the URL with someone outside your company
and you wanna have them join a Google Meet,
well, then you have the little pop up
that shows up saying someone outside the meeting
is trying to join and you can choose to admit them
or deny them.
Now, Zoom never built in this feature by default
and never had it switched on.
Now they have since switched on their waiting room feature,
but unfortunately the damage was already done.
People all over the world
who haven't switched that feature on,
have had people jump into their Zoom meetings,
sometimes schools, sometimes corporate meetings,
and it's either been someone outside the company
who shouldn't be listening to that corporate information
or in the worst cases,
people have been showing porn to kids who are in high school
or primary school even,
when teachers are trying to teach.
And you can imagine it's a complete mess
in the Zoom world right now.
Now next up outside of the Zoom-bombing,
there are a list of other security vulnerables
that have come up and become a part of Zoom
and unfortunately some of these are super serious.
Now, one of the most serious ones is half a million accounts
have actually been exposed somehow
because Zoom's systems weren't secure enough.
Someone has actually been able to get access
to all of those accounts and actually shared them
on the dark web.
That's one of the scariest ones .
After that happened, Zoom even admitted
that there were security issues with their recordings
and how they store them.
So after recording was stored,
it actually was able to be viewed
and left still available on the web.
And so once people had recorded a meeting,
someone could like try and guess that code
and people could actually download
other people's recordings, super, super scary stuff.
Now, as this was happening,
the Zoom CEO basically apologized and apologized
and there's been multiple apologies
that have been sent down.
And each time they've kind of like responded and reacted.
But honestly like that just kinda makes me uncomfortable
that there has to be an issue before someone responds
and reacts.
And all of this has just been mounting and mounting
the Zoom as the lens is focused more and more clearly
on them when there's security vulnerabilities.
Now, the next one that's super scary
is someone actually created an automated tool
to find Zoom meetings.
And that really just exposes how much of a problem
these Zoom bombings are.
Zoom have basically allowed their meetings
that don't let people enter a waiting room,
to just be open to the world.
And so what that means is that anyone
who like runs a tool like this,
you can see that it actually discovers
about 100 active meetings per hour,
that you can go ahead and Zoom bomb if you wanted to.
And that's pretty darn scary stuff.
Now, if that's not concerning enough,
even in Zoom's response to the claims
and the criticisms around their encryption levels
and how secure they're actually making sure
these meetings are,
they actually admitted that
they weren't even protecting their meetings
with the level of encryption that they had promised.
And so it's really concerning
how many security vulnerabilities,
but also just how lax they've been as a business
in actually making sure that
their video conferencing product is secure,
which they've promised from day one.
So what's been Zoom's response to all of this.
Well, the CEO has had to apologize publicly
a number of times,
and they've added a new security committee
inside the business,
they've brought on external security consultants
and they've been doing a pretty good job at squashing
all of the bugs as these have been coming up .
Overall, I'm a bit uncomfortable using
or recommending Zoom at all,
based on everything that's come out
and reading through this article made me quite uncomfortable
about the meetings that I've had on Zoom
and what I've recorded
and whether or not anyone
might accidentally stumble across those.
Most of all, I'm concerned about businesses in general
and choosing what tools they use.
If someone's fearful about their calls being recorded,
or being viewed by someone else,
then you may not be able to actually be productive
with your team in getting your work done.
And so overall Zoom's response has been good,
but a little bit of it was too little, too late.
You've already had companies all over the world
banning the use of Zoom, SpaceX, Microsoft Google,
there are a couple of obvious ones,
the US Pentagon, the US Senate ,
have all banned the use of Zoom because they've said,
this is not up to scratch on security standards,
so it can't be used anymore.
The Singapore schooling system basically said
nope, this is not gonna be used anywhere
and districts all over the US are beginning
to bring in Zoom bans.
So this is really becoming a bit of an issue,
and if these security teams have actually reviewed
the software and said, no, this is not up to scratch,
then it's actually something worthwhile listening to.
Am I worried about some of the smaller complaints,
like Zoom routing traffic
through a couple of servers in China?
Not really.
I mean, I try and stay away from the anti-China propaganda,
but Zoom still, if they said, no,
our traffic doesn't go through China,
but it actually was going through China.
Well, you have to start to worry
if you can actually trust their word.
They already had issues with what they said
was their encryption level being different
to what was actually being delivered.
And so I just have these issues
that are kind of mounting for me around Zoom
and whether or not you can trust them as a company.
Overall, at the end of the day,
I trust Google much more than Zoom
knowing that they have teams and teams
and teams of security experts.
And the whole of the G Suite ecosystem is locked down
and secured with all of Google's end to end encryption
between your device browser,
between Google servers
and between every device that you're using,
especially if you're using your mobile device
to connect into meetings by the app.
What that means is not only are you protected
when you're in a meeting,
but even things like the meeting recordings
going into Google Drive,
have all of the security and safety of Google Drive.
Your Google account,
if you've enabled two factor authentication
is locked down only to you,
and it is verified that nobody else can access
any of those files .
And Google being one of the most secure Clouds in the world,
means that you can trust them a lot more
than a private company with dubious ties,
too different areas in the world.
We originally used Zoom because the gallery view
was awesome to see everyone at the same time,
sharing a meeting via URL made it really easy
to meet either internally or externally with a customer
and Google's Meet required Chrome
and was kind of the Google way of doing meetings.
But now Google are announcing that they're adding
the gallery view into Google Meet.
You can already get it through a Chrome plugin right now.
There's also other features like being able to dial in
and the enterprise recording where you can record a meeting
and have it automatically go into your Google Drive
that's been made available for everyone ,
that makes using Google Meet so much more convenient
than firing up a third party app in Zoom.
Google also announced recently that Google Meet
now works in Safari as well.
So you don't have to worry about browser compatibility.
Anyone you share a Google Meet login with,
sharing the URL means that
they'll be able to jump straight in
and join your meeting.
Without any downloads without third party software,
and of course, without compromising
your other parties security.
If you're interested in more videos on Google Meet
and how to use it, well, go ahead and check them out below.
We've got different videos on our channel
on how to use the recording feature,
why you might choose Meet over Zoom
and also how to set up the gallery view plugin,
so you can get access to that sweet, sweet brady bunch view,
where you can see everyone at the same time.
Now, if you're already a G Suite user,
and you're interested in having a chat to our team
about how we can support your setup,
help you get more out of the platform
or anything to do with supporting
your G Suite implementation headlong to @itgenius.com
and check out our concierge service.
it's a premium support service
exclusively for customers who are already subscribed
to G Suite.
Now, if you're a business owner
and you're not yet using the Google ecosystem
for your business.
Well, you don't have to switch everything
out of the Microsoft world and into Google,
we can get you access to Google Meet.
If you're interested in that,
please headlong to our team's website,
have a chat to us and let them know
that you're interested in Google Meet for your meetings,
and we'll take you through all of the security
and safety features of Google Meet,
show you how to use it,
and even let your team get your hands on it as well.
Til next time we'll chat to you soon, cheers.