Zoom Surpasses 300M Daily Meeting Participants, Announces Zoom 5.0 with AES 256-Bit GCM Encryption

In today’s “Ask Eric Anything” webinar, Zoom founder and CEO Eric S. Yuan provided more progress updates on our 90-day security plan, including exciting announcements about Zoom 5.0 and surpassing 300 million daily Zoom meeting participants.

Eric was joined by Zoom CPO Oded Gal, Zoom CTO Brendan Ittelson, Alex Stamos, who is a security adviser to Zoom, and Lea Kissner, the former Global Lead of Privacy Technology at Google, who is consulting with Zoom on privacy and encryption. 

Key takeaways from this week’s session

Data routing control

Zoom admins and owners of paid accounts can opt in or out of any data center region (apart from their home region) at the account, group, or user level for processing certain customer data when a customer with a paid account hosts a meeting or webinar.

Zoom 5.0 announcement

Set to release this weekend, Zoom 5.0 includes two new features to help Zoom users host secure meetings and protect their data:

• Support for AES 256-Bit GCM: Zoom 5.0 supports AES 256-bit GCM encryption, which provides more protection for meeting data and greater resistance to tampering. Organizations will have access to GCM encryption with the release of Zoom 5.0, and a system-wide account enablement will occur May 30, when all Zoom customers will switch to the new cryptographic mode.
• Report a User: Hosts and co-hosts can report users to Zoom’s Trust & Safety team, who will review any potential misuse of the platform and take appropriate action. This feature will be found within the Security icon in the meeting controls.

Introducing Lea Kissner

Eric introduced Lea Kissner, the former Global Lead of Privacy Technology at Google and Chief Privacy Officer of Humu, who has joined Zoom as a security consultant. With her expertise in privacy, protecting users, and encryption, Lea will play an instrumental role in helping Zoom create a more secure platform.

Q&A

Here are some of the topics that were addressed live from webinar attendees this week:

How does Zoom’s new encryption compare to other technology providers’? 

Lea explained that Zoom’s new 256-bit AES-GCM encryption will be comparable to that used by many leading technology companies.

Will data centers get overloaded if everyone opts into the same ones?

Even with data center customization available, Zoom is designed to scale to meet heavy usage demands. We’ve been adding capacity in our data centers and working with our public cloud partners to scale as needed to ensure reliability, even with more than 300 million daily meeting participants.

Can Waiting Rooms, meeting registration, and meeting passwords be used together?

Meeting registration, passwords, and the Waiting Room feature can all be used for the same Zoom Meeting, and users who are hosting sensitive meetings should use them all for the most secure environment. 

How can users secure their Personal Meeting ID (PMI)?

Securing a Personal Meeting ID is similar to a professor holding office hours; you can keep your PMI open for trusted parties to join, but you must “keep the office door closed” by enabling the Waiting Room and meeting password. 

How can hosts prevent users from joining with another person’s name? 

Hosts can require all participants to register for the meeting, where they enter their first name, last name, email address, and other information, which the host can then confirm. Hosts can also use the Security icon to disable the ability for participants to rename themselves.

Thank you for your support

We continue to be very appreciative of all of our customers’ support in our journey to a more secure Zoom platform. It makes us very proud to know that millions of people around the world are using Zoom during this challenging time.

If you missed this week’s session, you can watch the recording here:

To give your feedback or to ask Eric a question, send an email to [email protected]. And be sure to sign up for next week’s “Ask Eric Anything” webinar.

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Edit 4/29/20: This blog originally referred to meeting participants as “users” and “people.” This was an oversight on our part.

4/30/20: The 4/22 blog also correctly used the term participants, but not consistently. The oversight was corrected on 4/23.

Editor’s note: This post was updated Nov. 6, 2020, to clarify language around customizing your data routing settings.

Editor’s note: This blog post was edited on Aug. 2, 2021 to include the most up to date information on Zoom encryption.

Editor’s note: This blog post was revised on 4/20/2023 to include the most up to date information on our data routing control feature.