Written by: Jay H.

Business collaboration tools like Microsoft 365 have been the backbone of many organizations throughout the pandemic. However, according to a new survey from data management firm Veritas Technologies, employee misuse of these channels can put company data at risk. The report highlights the dangers of misusing instant messaging (IM) and collaboration tools and offers organizations ways to reduce risk.

Employees Putting Companies At Risk

A survey of 12,500 office workers across ten countries revealed that most employees are putting their companies at risk. Seventy-one percent of global workers admitted to sharing sensitive and business-critical information using IM and collaboration tools. For example, 58 percent of employees save copies of business data transmitted over IM in the US. Meanwhile, 51 percent delete that information entirely. Both approaches could leave companies open to hefty fines if regulators perform an audit.

The types of sensitive data employees are sharing include client information (13%), details on HR issues (10%), contracts (10%), business plans (10%), and COVID-19 test results (12%). Worryingly, only less than one-third of employees claimed they hadn’t shared any compromising information.

Another concern is that many employees use collaboration tools to close deals, process orders, and agree to pay raises when there may not be a formal record of the discussion.

Increased Reliance On Applications

The challenges presented by sharing sensitive information are compounded by the amount of time employees spend using IM and collaboration apps. Since the start of the pandemic, there has been an increase in apps such as Zoom and Teams by 13 percent. This means that the employee spends an average of two and a half hours on these applications. Moreover, 27 percent of the workforce spends more than half of the working week on these tools.

Employees are conducting a significant amount of business on these tools and treating agreements as binding. For instance, as a result of receiving information over IM and collaboration applications, almost 24 percent have accepted and processed an order, 25 percent have accepted a reference for a job candidate, and 20 percent have taken a signed contract.

The survey also found that bosses had reprimanded 39 percent of employees for sharing sensitive information. Despite this, 75 percent of workers said they would continue to share this type of information.

“It is now clear that constraining employees to ‘approved’ methods of communication and collaboration tools isn’t effective,” said Ajay Bhatia, GM, Digital Compliance at Veritas. “Instead, our message is simple: don’t fight it – fix it.”

IM & Text Treated As Binding

When asked which communication methods provide the most reliable proof of an agreement, e-mail was the top choice at 96 percent. The second was an electronic signature, at 95 percent. However, a surprising amount of people found other methods to be reliable proof. Ninety-three percent of workers trusted IM, 89 percent said text, and 69 percent trusted social media.

Recommendations For Businesses

For organizations looking to regain control of data being shared over collaboration and messaging tools, Veritas provided the following recommendations:

• Standardize on a set of collaboration and messaging tools meeting the business’s needs – this will limit the sprawl.
• Create a policy for information sharing – this will help control sharing of sensitive information.
• Train all employees on the policies and tools deployed – this will help to reduce accidental policy breaches.
• Incorporate data sets from collaboration and messaging tools into the businesses’ data management strategy using SaaS data backup solutions.

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Written by: Jay H.

Zoom has announced various new Zoom Room features that will help organizations safely transition back into the workplace. The traditional workforce has evolved, and Zoom meets the challenges of supporting in-office and remote workers simultaneously.” Whether it’s in an office, co-located space, remote location, or at home, Zoom’s platform enables organizations to put employee health and safety at the center of their strategy,” the company wrote.

In a survey of 12,000 professionals, 60 percent said they want some flexibility in when and where they work. To accomplish this, employees must have a safe, healthy conference room experience to meet their hybrid needs. Zoom’s latest features empower teams to do great work, no matter where they are.

New Platform Capabilities

1. Virtual receptionist: Provide a contact-less greeting experience for guests with a virtual receptionist. Use Zoom Rooms Kiosk Mode to connect visitors with the receptionist to welcome them safely.

2. Pair a Zoom Room with your mobile device: Pair your iOS or Android mobile device to a Zoom Room, and it will automatically place your mobile client in companion mode during the meeting. If you also download the Zoom Rooms Controller app, you’ll gain access to all room controls. These include the ability to start or join a meeting and audio, video, and participant controls, eliminating the need for a shared in-room controller.

3. View real-time people count data: With supported cameras, you can see a room’s headcount in real-time on the Zoom Dashboard and the Scheduling Display. This feature ensures meetings are abiding by social distancing measures and staying under max capacity.

4. Monitor a room’s environment and air quality: Environmental data, including the air quality, humidity, CO2, and Volatile Organic Compounds, can all be monitored to ensure the safety of your meeting room. You can find these statistics on the Zoom dashboard on February 11.

5. Send a whiteboard to chat: Users can now share a whiteboard to a Zoom chat or email. Should you be in a personal Zoom Room, you can also send it to your group chats. This feature aims to enhance content sharing outside of the meeting room and improve cohesiveness.

6. Control a shared desktop: Zoom Rooms for Touch users can now control the desktop of the person sharing their screen right from their personal devices. This innovation streamlines collaboration and provides contact-less control of another person’s device.

Safety And Collaboration At The Forefront

Overall, these new Zoom innovations prioritize safety and collaboration within the hybrid workforce. Some estimates say that by the end of 2021, between 25-30 percent of the workforce will be working-from-home multiple days a week. Therefore, these new Zoom features meet the current and future needs of this emerging workforce.

Need help ensuring your hybrid workforce is cyber secure? See how our managed IT services can keep your employees safe, no matter where they work from.

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Written by: Jay H.

Zoom has introduced new security features to combat disruptive meeting participants, in conjunction with other tools to keep meetings secure.

New Security Tools

Suspend Participant Activities

The new security features include hosts’ option to temporarily pause their meeting and remove a disruptive participant. Hosts can stop all video, audio, in-meeting chat, annotation, screen sharing, and recording by clicking “Suspend Participant Activities” under the security icon. Breakout Rooms will also end.

Hosts will then be able to report a participant and include any details and screenshots. Once submitted, the offending user will be removed from the meeting, and Zoom’s Trust & Safety team will be alerted. The hosts can then resume their meeting by re-enabling the video and chat features they wish to use. Once the meeting ends, Zoom will send the hosts an email for more information.

This Suspend Participant Activities security measure is enabled for all free and paid Zoom users.

Report by Participants

Reporting users was already an option for hosts, but now meeting participants can also report disruptive users by clicking on the top-left Security badge. Account owners and admins can enable or disable this feature in their web settings.

Both of these new security features are available across all Zoom platforms, including desktop and mobile apps.

At-Risk Meeting Notifier

Zoom has had problems with disruptive participants crashing Zoom meetings, in an act dubbed as ‘Zoom-bombing.’ To combat this, Zoom released a new internal tool that scans public social media posts for Zoom meeting links. It will automatically notify the hosts via email and give them recommended actions to take when it discovers an at-risk meeting. This advice includes creating a new session and enabling security features. Zoom warns that should hosts receive an email, “it’s critical to take action or risk having your meeting disrupted.”

Zoom notes that one of the best ways to keep meetings secure is to never share meeting IDs or passcodes on any public website, including social media.

Need help staying secure while working from home? Check out our IT support solutions to see how we can help you.

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Written by: Jay H.

Zoom has announced that end-to-end encryption (E2EE) is finally available for free and paid users globally. The feature is available as a technical preview for thirty days, during which Zoom is soliciting feedback from users. E2EE is available on Zoom desktop client version 5.4.0 for Mac and PC, the Zoom Android and Apple apps, and Zoom Rooms.

This feature is long-awaited. At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Zoom saw a massive spike in users, making it an industry-standard video conferencing app. However, numerous privacy and security issues arose, and as a result, Zoom was banned in many places. So, Zoom CEO and founder Eric Yuan pledged to resolve these issues before continuing normal app development.

And they did just that. Zoom bought Keybase, a company specializing in end-to-end encryption, and worked with professional cryptographers to develop new security features. After six months, Zoom followed through with its promise and unveiled E2EE. Although this feature is still in development, it is a significant security upgrade for those who need it.

Some Inconveniences

Despite the enhanced security, enabling end-to-end encryption may be more hassle than it’s worth for many users. Zoom calls are encrypted by default, just not end-to-end, meaning it is acceptable for everyday conversations. Enabling this feature makes various tools unavailable, including “join before host, cloud recording, streaming, live transcription, Breakout Rooms, polling, 1:1 private chat, and meeting reactions”. Another inconvenience is that you can only join the meeting from the Zoom desktop client, mobile app, or Zoom Rooms. Also, every participant has to enable end-to-end encryption for the feature to work.

How to Enable Zoom’s End-to-End Encryption

Despite the drawbacks, you still may want to use this feature. So, here’s how to use Zoom’s end-to-end encryption.

• Click Settings in the navigation bar, then Meeting.
• Under Security, turn Allow use of end-to-end encryption on, then confirm your decision. You will have to have a verified phone number for this.
• Afterward, set your default encryption level to End-to-end Encryption.

Zoom says plans to roll out better identity management and single-sign-on integration are on the horizon for 2021. However, people who have been demanding this feature can start encrypting their meetings immediately.

Read more about video conferencing apps to see if Zoom is the app for you.

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Written by: Jay H.

The increase of remote workers and students due to the coronavirus pandemic has let the Zoom video conferencing app see a surge of users. Its simple interface has made it the default video chat platform for millions. Going from 10 million users in December to 200 million in March, Zoom is the No. 1 most downloaded app in the Apple and Google app stores. The British Columbian government has even licensed Zoom to support virtual learning for grade school students. However, despite its popularity, several privacy and security issues have surfaced for Zoom.

Hackers and pranksters have been targeting private and public conferences and displaying offensive material. This practice has is referred to as ‘Zoom-bombing’, and is now a federal offense in the United States. Many schools in the United States have also banned the app and are switching to alternative platforms.

Zoom Privacy & Security Issues

Alongside “Zoom-bombing”, Zoom has been scrutinized for other issues, including routing calls through China, as well as not providing end-to-end encryption of calls despite claiming it did so.

Furthermore, corrupting and replacing the software with a malicious version that hijacks the application is easy. Although the platform has anti-tampering mechanisms in place, the mechanisms themselves are not protected from tampering. This means malware already on a computer could tamper with Zoom, and criminals can create fully functional versions of Zoom altered to perform malicious acts.

Zoom CEO and founder Eric Yuan apologized for the issues and promised to address them, pledging to halt regular development of the platform while the company worked to fix security and privacy concerns.

“We recognize that we have fallen short of the community’s – and our own – privacy and security expectations,” Yuan wrote. He stated that Zoom would deal with these issues by “enacting a feature freeze, effectively immediately, and shifting all our engineering resources to focus on our biggest trust, safety, and privacy issues.”

Securing your Zoom conferences

Despite the issues present, for non-confidential meetings, Zoom is satisfactory. There are steps that schools and businesses can take to help secure their Zoom meetings:

1. Let only the Host share the screen: To solve the issue of “Zoom-bombing”, adjust the screen share options to allow only the Host to share their screen. From the general Zoom settings app window, click the “Share Screen” option and select “Advanced settings”. There, only allow the Host to share their screen.
2. Don’t share video conferencing links in public social media posts: An obvious tip, but don’t post your video conferencing link in public social media posts to prevent unwanted guests from joining.
3. Use Waiting Rooms: This option allows the host to screen the guests before the meeting begins. To access this feature, go to your master account settings and click “Settings”. Then, click on the “Meetings” tab, and scroll down to the bottom. You will find the “Waiting Room” option, which, once enabled, will become the default setting for all meetings.

To reiterate, Zoom is acceptable for non-confidential meetings, such as classroom discussions. Following the above tips can minimize the risks of privacy issues, such as “Zoom-bombing”. However, if you are uncomfortable using the platform, or are hosting a confidential meeting, alternatives such as Microsoft Teams or Skype may be better suited.

Need secure software specifically tailored for your organization? We offer custom software and web development services to solve your problems.

Consider learning more about cybersecurity topics.

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