Ride the Lightning

Zoom Acquires Keybase and Will Offer End to End Encryption

May 11, 2020

Gizmodo posted on May 8 that Zoom has acquired Keybase, a New York-based company specializing in encrypted messaging and cloud services.

"We are excited to integrate Keybase's team into the Zoom family to help us build end-to-end encryption that can reach current Zoom scalability," CEO Eric Yuan said in a Zoom blog post.

Once in place, end-to-end encryption will only be available for users with paid Zoom plans (which start at $14.99 per month), meaning anyone using Zoom's free service won't have access. If a meeting's host has enabled this feature, participants will be barred from joining by phone and cloud-based recording will be disabled. Yuan emphasized that the feature will not store the encryption key on Zoom's servers, so the company will not be able to see any part of the call.

"We believe this will provide equivalent or better security than existing consumer end-to-end encrypted messaging platforms, but with the video quality and scale that has made Zoom the choice of over 300 million daily meeting participants, including those at some of the world's largest enterprises," he wrote.

The company also announced that it plans to publish a "detailed draft cryptographic design" on May 22 as it continues to roll out its 90-day security plan.

This is darn good news. And glad that Zoom will publish the draft cryptographic design so that other experts can weigh in. Zoom has been (sorry) zooming into our new normal with an incredible video conferencing platform which is, along with many new innovations for law firms, propelling the practice of law into a new future. Though Zoom had many security issues in the past, we have been pretty much awed by the speed with which it has addressed security problems. Keep it up Zoom!

Hat tip to Dave Ries.

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
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Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
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