Zoom brings new password requirements, longer meeting IDs and more to its platform

Earlier this month, Zoom CEO Eric S Yuan apologised for the privacy and security issues in the video conferencing platform. He also announced a 90-day feature freeze for the app during which time the company would focus on improving the security and privacy of the platform. Now, Zoom is keeping good on the promises it made.

The company has released a bunch of new features that are aimed at enhancing the overall security of the platform. Let's take a look at them one by one:

-- New password requirements: As a part of these changes, Zoom account users and admins will now be able to set minimum meeting password requirements to adjust the minimum length and require letters, numbers, and special characters, or allow only numeric passwords.

In addition to that all free Basic account users will have the alphanumeric password option on by default, Zoom wrote in a blog post.

-- Random meeting IDs: Zoom is introducing longer meeting IDs to enhance the security of its platform. As a part of the changes, the one-time randomly generated meetings IDs for newly scheduled meetings and webinars will have 11 digits instead of 9. Users' Personal Meeting ID (PMI), on the other hand, will remain the same.

- Cloud recordings: Zoom is turning on password protection for all shared cloud recordings. Additionally, it is enhancing the complexity of passwords on users' cloud recordings.

-- Zoom is also enabling the use of third party platforms such as Box, Dropbox and OneDrive on its platform. This feature had been disabled temporarily.

-- Lastly, Zoom has added a new feature that would allow Zoom Chat users to hide the message preview for desktop chat notifications. When this is turned off, users will be alerted that they have a new message without displaying contents of the message.

In addition to this, the company has also fixed issues pertaining to missing data and delay on the Zoom Dashboard.

Separately, the Zoom CEO also conducted the "Ask Eric Anything" webinar earlier this week wherein he announced the security features, changes to Zoom's data center routing plan and introduction of a new bug bounty program.

"Starting April 18, account admins will have the ability to choose whether or not their data is routed through specific data center regions, giving users more control of their interactions with Zoom's global network," Yuan wrote in a blog post.

"Zoom will be working with Luta Security to reboot our bug bounty program...Luta Security will be assessing Zoom's program holistically with a 90-day "get well" plan, which will cover all internal vulnerability handling processes," he added.