In a bit of good news for Zoom Video Communications (ZM -0.68%), New York City school district, the largest in the nation, has lifted a ban on the use of Zoom for distance learning.
According to media reports, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said last week the ban has been removed after Zoom worked with the city to create a platform that provides the proper amount of security to support remote learning. Carranza also expressed pleasure with the tech stock's efforts to address security vulnerabilities with its popular video conferencing platform. The New York City school district has more than 1.1 million students.
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Zoom has been seeing usage soar amid the COVID-19 pandemic as schools remain shuttered and companies across the country mandate employees work from home. But it was quickly thrust into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Hackers were able to infiltrate meetings in what has become known as Zoombombing. That resulted in schools, companies, and governments banning the use of Zoom for official business. Zoom even raised the ire of New York Attorney General Letitia James in late March, who wanted to know what the company was doing to protect users amid the surge in usage.
Things have improved a lot since then. Zoom announced a 90-day security plan designed to close any security vulnerabilities and just made its first acquisition of Keybase, a secure messaging and file-sharing service that will speed up its plan for end-to-end encryption on the Zoom video platform. Meanwhile, NY AG James reached an agreement with Zoom last week in which Zoom agreed to put new security measures in place to protect users, giving them more control over their privacy. In return, James is dropping her investigation of the company.
“Our lives have inexorably changed over the past two months, and while Zoom has provided an invaluable service, it unacceptably did so without critical security protections,” said James said when announcing the deal. “This agreement puts protections in place so that Zoom users have control over their privacy and security, and so that workplaces, schools, religious institutions, and consumers don’t have to worry while participating in a video call. "
