- There be some new security features
from our friends at Zoom,
so let's take a few moments
and let's see exactly what the new security upgrades are
for May 2020 from Zoom today on DottoTech.
(upbeat music)
Steven Dotto here, how the heck you doing this fine day?
And today we're gonna take a look
at Zoom's upgraded 5.0 client
which has a bevy of new security features.
They've been rolling them out slowly
and upgrading their Zoom client over the last month or so,
but this is a fairly major upgrade
with one major insignificant improvement.
Now Zoom has been responding to mercurial growth.
They've been exploding in popularity
as the world has shut down
and more and more meetings have gone online
in response to the COVID pandemic.
But and so Zoom has been,
as fast as they can, I imagine,
rolling out new security updates addressing shortcomings
within the application
that they've been stress tested like never before, I guess.
Well, if you visit your Zoom account right now,
you'll see that Zoom 5.0 is now available
and they are encouraging us to upgrade
as quickly as possible.
In fact they're saying that previous versions of Zoom
won't be supported after the end of this month
which is May, 2020,
if you happen to be watching this video a little bit later.
So, all that you have to do is basically click
and go to their download center
and you can download the new client
for the operating system which you happen to have.
And they've got several different add-ons
or several different downloads that you can do,
it's not just gonna be one download
because we're using Zoom in multiple locations.
So obviously you're gonna wanna download the Zoom
for your basic Zoom client.
If you have the Microsoft add-on
or you're using the browser extensions,
if you're using mobile apps
and different plug-ins,
make sure you download all of the appropriate updates
for Zoom 5.0
because this is, as I said, a fairly significant upgrade.
If we go in and we take a look at their explanation,
which we will share the link in the description,
they're saying Zoom 5.0 is here
and there is one major change,
and they tell us right away.
And that is we now have end to end encryption
from something called GCM Encryption.
Now what does this mean?
It means that in the past,
if somebody intercepted our video call mid stream somehow,
if they had some technology
so that they could interrupt it,
they could actually see us having the conversation
in plain, I was gonna say in plain English,
but it could be in any language.
But they would be able to see it
without it being encrypted in any way, shape or form.
But now with end to end encryption,
it means that only the people
with the client software on both ends
will be able to see the actually video call take place
and to participate.
So nobody can spy on you anymore
once you upgrade to Zoom 5.0 if both clients,
both ends are using this encryption software
meaning it's end to end right?
It has to happen in both sides.
So that's why Zoom is pushing this forward
as quickly as possible to get everybody using it.
As you scroll down the page
you'll see that they indeed wanna make sure
we have it all done before May 30th
and at that point they're there going to disable support
for the previous versions.
So it'll be important to do it.
And you'll be getting notifications in multiple locations
if you're a little bit tardy, I imagine.
There's a few other enhancements that they done
and they've been rolling most of these out
over the past couple of weeks,
we actually covered some of them in an earlier video
but it's worth recapping now
because we are on topic.
So the new things that they've added,
most of them will appear to the average user
right in the user controls, right at the bottom.
Where you can now report a user,
there's some changes to how the waiting room happens,
which I will touch on in more detail.
As well as the ability to lock meetings
and remove participants.
If we jump over into the Zoom software.
Now I've upgraded to Zoom 5.0 here,
looks the same.
Actually it might look a little bit different,
I think that that end button is different than it used to be
for the meeting.
I'm not 100% positive, but it seems to me that it's new.
Along the bottom here
you see all of our different meeting options.
Now if you don't see any of these options
on your version of Zoom,
you can probably enable them
if you go into your Zoom software,
if you go into your Zoom software in your browser,
you just go into your Zoom account
and there when you go into the settings,
you can set up, you can modify the different settings
and what displays within that menu bar at the bottom.
A lot of people don't have some different options,
for example, they look at mine, they say,
oh you have break out rooms, I don't have them?
That's be I turned on break out rooms in my settings.
So if you see something here that you don't have,
just go check and you probably have it available to you
if you choose to enable it.
But the changes that we're talking about
and the significant ones around security,
cluster around these two menu items right here.
The first is the security button
which allows you to lock the meeting
once the meeting's in process.
That's just like locking the door on a regular meeting,
nobody else can get in once it's started.
You can also manage the meeting room here.
Now, for most users, the meeting room
is now by default, enabled.
In other words,
if you start a meeting
and then you don't pay attention to what's going on,
you'll be having crickets
because nobody can get into the meeting
until you admit them to the meeting from the waiting room.
They're all gonna be held in this waiting room
and they won't be part of the meeting.
How do you get them in the meeting?
What you do is you click on this participants button here
and that will pop out this side bar
which will allow you to then
be able to control all of your different participants.
You can turn on and off their microphones.
But the meeting room will appear right here
at the very top of this window.
You can also, if you choose to,
you can disable meeting room manually,
which will then allow anybody
who enters with the meeting ID
to come straight into the room,
that's your choice, you can do that.
But as I say, by default it is going to be turned on,
so you'll have to make sure that you turn it off
or that you admit people into your meeting
in order to have people actually in the meeting.
Another change that they've made
is mid meeting you can re-enable the meeting room.
You can turn it back,
the waiting room.
You can turn it back on
and then say you have people
after you've started the meeting,
you can then admit them on a case by case basis
if you choose to.
It's a little bit different than locking the meeting,
which just shuts them out
and doesn't give them the option to get in at all.
So those are some of the big changes
as far as the meeting room
and those security settings are concerned.
What are the other ones that they said?
They've got another list down here.
They talk a lot more about the waiting room.
Oh they've changed the meeting ID,
which is that number that you use,
that people could actually try
to just force their way into meetings
by randomly entering numbers into the meeting room ID
and they were able to jump in and disrupt meetings.
A lot of these changes are reference
to people disrupting meetings
and adding extra privacy to your meeting,
so they've enabled that now.
So they've additionally discouraged people
from jumping into your meetings who are not welcome
by increasing the password complexity,
by increasing the meeting ID complexity,
so people can't just phish about
and hopefully find a meeting that's active
and then jump into it.
Requiring meeting registration,
if you choose to enable it
so that all of those settings now
mean that the whole concept of Zoom bombings
should be a thing of the past.
We really shouldn't have an issue with that anymore.
Now the one that really caught my attention
with these new safeguards
was a couple that I haven't thought of before
and that is adding audio and screen share watermarks.
What this does is it increases the copyright.
I'm sure it's not official copyright.
But it means that if you record a meeting
that I am in and I'm speaking away
and then you decide to take my audio recording
and use it for something
that I haven't given you permission to,
or perhaps I don't want you to use,
there will be an audio watermark,
you won't be able to hear it just in the normal flow,
but it is embedded in there
and it can be found so you can later on claim
that that is indeed your copy written material
or that is something that you own the rights to
and they shouldn't be sharing.
Similarly, if somebody does a screen grab
without your permission,
your email address will be embedded within that screen grab
so that you again can claim ownership over that image
or at least you're identified as the person
who that image was generated from.
So some additional privacy considerations being added
to the dynamic media that you're including
within the meeting itself.
Now, I encourage you to read through
the rest of these safeguards.
We will include a link to this document below
so you can have a look through to see exactly where it sits
as far as your own security threshold goals.
But Zoom 5.0 is definitely Zoom's response
to some criticism that they've received
and some companies saying that they don't feel safe
with their employees using it
especially because of the end to end encryption,
but the other privacy options also come into play.
So perhaps now for you, Zoom has now reached the threshold
where it is a trustworthy application.
Maybe they still have a ways to go,
that's going to be your call.
And I'm sure you will share your thoughts with me
in the comments field.
And I promise you I read each and every comment,
even if I don't have time to reply
to all of those comments.
I hope you found today's video to be useful.
If you have any comments or thoughts,
be sure that you share them in the comments below
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and I will see you next time right here
for more DottoTech.
Til then, I'm Steve Dotto,
have fun storming the castle.