Zoom video chats unveiled a new update aimed at providing more privacy to its users as part of its efforts to silence the criticism recently directed against it.
In his report published by the British newspaper "The Independent", the writer Andrew Griffin said that the new version of the update, called Zoom 5.0, adds a sophisticated encryption feature that aims mainly to protect chats as they pass through the Internet.
But security experts have warned that the company still needs to take more measures to ensure the protection of video clips and conversations between people.
This is part of the company's "90-day plan," which requires postponing the release of all new features and focusing instead on fixing its various security vulnerabilities.
The popularity of the application has grown tremendously during the last period, as companies, schools and individuals have tended to use it since the beginning of the application of quarantine all over the world.
This increase in the number of users drew attention to the security holes in the application, including insufficient protection for the videos as they passed through the Internet and the storming of strangers to the talks.
Although Zoom has pledged in the past to encrypt its conversation, cybersecurity professionals have confirmed that the conversations were not protected to the degree required, and that intruders could easily intercept them.
The main update includes adding a new icon that puts application security features into the interface, requiring users to choose menus if they want to turn on options that prevent hackers from hacking into conversations.
Privacy experts welcomed the move, but urged the company to do more to ensure the conversations are better protected. Despite the company's ongoing efforts to boost encryption, Jonathan Knudsen, chief security analyst at Synopsys, believes that this does not change the fact that Zoom's architecture is not fully encrypted.
According to Knudson, what the company claims that the talks are fully encrypted is not true, because cyber security experts and privacy advocates understand full encryption as the inability of any third party to view the conversation at any of its stages, while the truth is that the talks pass at some point with a rule Company Data.
For his part, CEO of Zoom Eric Yuan announced that there are new updates coming through which the Foundation seeks to better respond to the demands of respecting privacy.
"I am proud to reach this stage in our 90-day plan, but this is only the beginning," Yuan said in a statement. "We have established this company in order to delight our customers. We will gain the trust and happiness of customers through our continuous endeavor to make our platform the most secure platform."