Zoom to roll out end-to-end encryption

Zoom on Wednesday announced that it will soon begin to roll out its end-to-end encryption (E2EE) offering starting next week.

The company in May had announced that it had acquired technology start-up Keybase, which specialises in encryption, to enable end-to-end encryption for the video conferencing tool in a bid to improve security and privacy on the platform.

It will now be rolling out a technical preview of E2EE for users in the first phase of its four-phase E2EE rollout.

“We’re excited to announce that starting next week, Zoom’s end-to-end encryption (E2EE) offering will be available as a technical preview, which means we’re proactively soliciting feedback from users for the first 30 days,” Zoom announced in an official blog post.

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Zoom’s free and paid users globally can host up to 200 participants in an E2EE meeting on the platform.

Zoom’s E2EE offering is based on public key cryptography. Customers will be required to enable E2EE meetings at the account level and opt-in to E2EE on a per-meeting basis.

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Some features to be disabled

“Hosts can enable the setting for E2EE at the account, group, and user level and can be locked at the account or group level. All participants must have the setting enabled to join an E2EE meeting. In Phase 1, all meeting participants must join from the Zoom desktop client, mobile app, or Zoom Rooms,” explained the blog post.

When E2EE is enabled for a meeting, participants will be able to see a green shield logo in the upper left corner of their meeting screen with a padlock in the middle.

Enabling E2EE, however, will lead to a few features of the platform being disabled.

“Enabling this version of Zoom’s E2EE in your meetings disables certain features, including join before host, cloud recording, streaming, live transcription, Breakout Rooms, polling, 1:1 private chat, and meeting reactions,” Zoom said.

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