Zoom video conferencing platform has experienced exponential growth in recent months due to coronavirus pandemic. With that popularity has come increased scrutiny over Zoom’s security as new vulnerabilities are continually being discovered.
With a view to fixing its security flaws, Zoom has decided to acquire Keybase, specialized in secure messaging and file sharing services.
The acquisition of security and encryption engineers will accelerate Zoom’s plan to build end-to-end encryption that can reach current Zoom scalability.
The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
“There are end-to-end encrypted communications platforms. There are communications platforms with easily deployable security. There are enterprise-scale communications platforms. We believe that no current platform offers all of these. This is what Zoom plans to build, giving our users security, ease of use, and scale, all at once,” said Eric S. Yuan, CEO of Zoom.
As members of Zoom’s security engineering function, the Keybase team will provide important contributions to Zoom’s 90-day plan to proactively identify, address, and enhance the security and privacy capabilities of its platform.
Keybase.io co-founder and developer Max Krohn will lead the Zoom security engineering team, reporting directly to Yuan. Leaders from Zoom and Keybase will work together to determine the future of the Keybase product.
According to Yuan, a detailed draft cryptographic design will be published on May 22. He said, “We will then host discussion sections with civil society, cryptographic experts, and customers to share more details and solicit feedback.”