Jason Lee will join Zoom Video Communications as the chief information security officer, effective June 29, 2020, the company announced on Wednesday.
Lee has been a part of the information security ecosystem for almost 20 years and most recently served as the senior vice-president of security operations at Salesforce. He has previously also served as the principal director of security engineering at Microsoft.
Lee will lead the security team at Zoom and report to Aparna Bawa, the company’s chief operating officer.
“Our customers’ security is extremely important and is at the core of everything we do. We are excited to welcome Jason, who has deep industry experience, understands the complexity of servicing a wide variety of users, and can lead Zoom’s efforts to strengthen the security of our platform during this time of rapid expansion,” said Bawa in the announcement.
Zoom has been a go-to platform in nearly all industries and businesses for all types of communications amid the ongoing pandemic and saw exponential growth in the number of its daily participants. Total daily Zoom participants jumped from 10 million in December 2019 to over 300 million today. This has also made the company a prime target for cybercriminals. Zoom was criticized for not being upfront with customers about the level of protection it offers. User credentials were also found up for sale once in the month of April.
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The company has been acting fast to solve privacy and security issues by frequently releasing privacy enhancements. As part of its strategy to enhance privacy, Zoom enacted a feature freeze for 90 days on April 1, shifting all its engineering resources to focus on the biggest trust, safety, and privacy issues. In addition, the company launched a CISO council in partnership with leading CISOs from across the industry to facilitate an ongoing dialogue regarding security and privacy best practices.
Now that Zoom is nearing the end of its 90-day security and privacy plan, the company says “Lee will focus on continuing Zoom’s path of putting the security and privacy of its users first by ensuring that the frictionless and easy-to-use platform remains secure”.
The video conferencing platform also announced Wednesday it has reversed course and decided to provide end-to-end encryption to all customers, not just those who pay for a subscription. Zoom faced criticism from civil rights groups for its plans to exclude free calls from encryption services. Encryption helps secure communication so they can only be read by the users involved.