THE ZOOM BOOM
WHAT IS ZOOM?
If you work from home, you’ve probably heard about Zoom, one of the leading video conferencing software apps (in old English applications) on the market.
You may already be using Zoom.
ZOOM allows you to virtually interact with co-workers, friends, family & join online exercise sessions & the like when in-person meetings aren’t possible. This makes keeping in touch seem much more human, as it helps you feel connected. It’s a good application.
With the COVID-19 coronavirus wreaking havoc across the world, Zoom has become an essential tool for small, medium, and large-sized teams in fact anyone that wants to keep in touch and continue their daily workflows with the minimal disruption it can & does provide a welcome communication channel.
Like any technology, Zoom can be a useful tool, but privacy and IT security should not be put to one side for the sake of ease of use.
This is a new COVID-19 reality:
If you are using Zoom without the right precautions, you are vulnerable to a practice known as “ZoomBombing.” a new phenomenon and a new buzzword.
This sees uninvited attendees viewing your business meeting, or worse, sharing violent or pornographic images and content.
It isn’t just business creating the ‘ZoomBoom’ Zoom has seen millions of new subscriptions in the past week alone.
Zoom is not new.
The service started in January 2013, and by May 2013 it claimed one million participants. By 2015, it had grown to 100 million, today 1 billion and rising.
Microsoft has persistently tried to acquire Zoom over the years without success.
A note for parents
———-
Our young people have been on the front line of social media for years. They won’t be a stranger to Zoom, for many its as familiar to them as Facebook & Houseparty.
If you host Zoom meetings, be sure to be in your waiting room before anyone enters.
Zoom hosts (the organiser) should disable ‘file transfer’ to prevent any malware being shared that option is available in your settings within zoom.
As a result of this disclosure, Zoom has now added “password by default” to all future scheduled meetings; made password settings enforceable at the account level and group level by account admins; removed a feature that automatically indicates if a meeting ID is valid or invalid; and added a feature to block repeated attempts to scan for meeting IDs.