Zoom CEO Eric S Yuan conveyed apologies through a blog post for “falling short” on security issues and promised to address concerns.
Zoom is now being used by millions of people for work and leisure, as lockdowns are imposed in many countries. This, in many ways, has paved way to security and privacy concerns.
He said that the use of Zoom had soared in ways he could never have foreseen prior to the coronavirus pandemic. Eric Yuan spoke candidly about how “usage of Zoom ballooned overnight.”
“As of the end of December last year, the maximum number of daily meeting participants, both free and paid, was approximately 10 million. In March this year, we reached more than 200 million,” he said.
He admitted that despite “working around the clock” to support the influx of new users, the service had “fallen short of the community’s—and our own—privacy and security expectations.”
Zoom was the victim of attack, known as the Zoombombing, in which unwelcome visitors disrupt a meeting. And it was rife with security problems, to the extent that the company confirmed on April 2 2020 that it was pausing app updates to concentrate on privacy and protection for 90 days.
“We are also committed to being transparent throughout this process,” the CEO stated in the blog post.
Zoom is expected to prepare a transparency report documenting user data, documents, and information requests, and to launch a CISO council in collaboration with various CISOs to address best practices in security and privacy. Many of the latest steps in the pipeline will include involving the company in white box penetration testing and increasing the current bug bounty system.