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Zoom Now Includes End-to-End Encryption

By Laura Tucker
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If you’ve been hesitant or worried about using Zoom for your meetings because you are leery about how private and secure it is, it’s a good news day for you. Zoom Video Communications, Inc. announced that it now includes end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in its suddenly-popular team meeting software.

Just a year ago, not many of us had heard of Zoom. Now within just a matter of months, we all know what it is, whether or not we have ever used it.

The workforce that is now working from home has been using Zoom to keep in contact with coworkers. Students have been using Zoom for remote learning. Even entertainers have been using Zoom to produce TV shows, concerts, etc.

News Zoom Encryption Meeting

If you haven’t used it, you may be hesitant because you’re worried about the security and privacy behind it. Zoom has put together an end-to-end encryption package in a relatively short time, meeting the needs of its platform that has suddenly become very popular.

Zoom Encryption Announcement

Zoom announced that end-to-end encryption is now available globally in both free and paid versions. It can be used in meetings with up to 200 people.

E2EE is available as a technical preview, as the company wants users to provide feedback for the next 30 days. It’s available on the Zoom desktop client version for Mac and PC, the Zoom Android app, and Zoom Rooms. The Zoom iOS app is pending approval in the Apple App Store.

All your Zoom meetings under 200 people can now have the same 256-bit AES GCM encryption that meetings have by default. But now it will be more secure, and only each participant will have access to meeting encryption keys. The meeting’s servers won’t even have the keys.

News Zoom Encryption Mac

The Zoom cloud meeting server typically generates encryption keys for each meeting and distributes them to participants when they join a meeting. Under the new E2EE, the meeting host generates the keys and uses cryptography to distribute them to the participants. The servers never see the encryption keys. The encrypted data that is sent through the servers cannot be read by the servers.

Zoom account administrators can enable the E2EE in the app dashboard at the level of account, group, and user. At the account and group level, it can also be locked. Once enabled, the host can toggle E2EE on and off for meetings. The availability in the desktop client, mobile apps, and Zoom Rooms is phase one of the E2EE rollout.

“We’re very proud to bring Zoom’s new end-to-end encryption to Zoom users globally today,” said Zoom CISO Jason Lee. “This has been a highly requested feature from our customers, and we’re excited to make this a reality. Kudos to our encryption team who joined us from Keybase in May and developed this impressive security feature within just six months.”

Read on to find other ways you can make your Zoom call more secure.

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Laura Tucker Avatar
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

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