A new Zoom 5.0 update is rolling out today that’s designed to address some of the many complaints that Zoom has faced in recent weeks. With this new update, there’s now a security icon that groups together a number of Zoom’s security features. You can use it to quickly lock meetings, remove participants, and restrict screen sharing and chatting in meetings.
One of the most important features of Zoom’s 5.0 update is the addition of 256-bit AES-GCM encryption — one of the more complex flavors of the Advanced Encryption Standard. Zoom had previously claimed that it used end-to-end encryption, even though this was not true, so this is welcome news. When it comes to the user interface, hosts will no longer have to dig through various sub-menus to access security options a new button will be prominently displayed on the meeting menu bar. They can also easily report Zoom party crashers with a “report user” button. Meanwhile, admins will be able to decide which data centers regions data is sent to.
These updates are good news, and to Zoom’s credit, the company has acted relatively quickly in addressing security concerns. However, it seems likely that many of these features will only be leveraged by more savvy users and admins for organizations. Zoom makes it sound like the upgrade will be a manual process, which doesn’t help much, either. The company’s download page still only offers Zoom 4.6.12, but 5.0 should be out sometime this week.
