Zoom App Basics

The Zoom app was founded by Eric S. Yuan in 2013 as a hassle-free solution for scheduling and conducting online meetings with people from remote locations. Soon this app found its place in the enterprise ecosystems as their go-to online meeting scheduler and organizer. In 2017, it acquired a unicorn status, and in 2019 it went for IPO. The company saw twice the number of new members in March 2020 than it had in the entire year of 2019.

What makes Zoom such a hit is that it has cross-platform compatibility and incorporates features that are easy to find, easy to use, and meets its purpose. Developers of Zoom have carefully added new features with time and made sure it is not overwhelming to the end-user. This video-conferencing application has gained wide acceptance in the health, finance, government, and education sectors as well.

The tempting attributes of this video-first app include group meetings with participants ranging from 100 to 10000, virtual backgrounds, integration with calendars such as Google, Yahoo, and Outlook, hosting meetings with several admins, waiting rooms, and joining without having to create an account. What’s more, one only needs three things to join or conduct a meeting here, a digital interface, a webcam, and an internet connection.

A basic plan which is free for all users allows only 40 minutes of group meetings but unlimited one meetings. For small to medium businesses, the Pro and Business plans should suffice all requirements. For larger companies, the Enterprise annual plan covers all needs. There are several add on schemes for occasional users or to stretch the limits of subscription benefits.

Zoom leverages its expertise in building sturdy interfaces by creating reliable and scalable backend security. To digitally code all information crossing over its network highway, they use AES encryption, TLS encryption, and SRTP encryptions. However, there has been much uproar about the acquisitions of having several loopholes for the hackers to take advantage of in Zoom’s security system.

To address these concerns, the company introduced an end-to-end encryption system that relies on the decryption keys stored in the local storage of the user interface. This system mitigates the risk associated with decryption keys held on the cloud server that is sometimes prone to hackers.