Zoom 5.0 Update: End-to-End Encryption is Here to Stay

- 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. 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 and if you've not yet subscribed to this channel, what the heck are you waiting for? Click that subscribe button, ring that notification bell, and I will see you next time right here for more DottoTech. Til then, I'm Steve Dotto, have fun storming the castle.