Think that call or online meeting is secure? You might want to ask an expert first?

As most of North America is now working from home, those trying to work are now finding board rooms and those always required meeting are now taking place online.

Whether it is Webex, Zoom, Join.Me, Skype or even FaceTime – the convenience is ideal. But just how secure those calls are and whether or not someone is collecting, eavesdropping or recording might be altogether completely different.

From Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan:

During normal operations, Zoom clients attempt to connect to a series of primary datacenters in or near a user’s region, and if those multiple connection attempts fail due to network congestion or other issues, clients will reach out to two secondary datacenters off of a list of several secondary datacenters as a potential backup bridge to the Zoom platform. In all instances, Zoom clients are provided with a list of datacenters appropriate to their region. This system is critical to Zoom’s trademark reliability, particularly during times of massive internet stress.”

In other words, North American calls are supposed to stay in North America, just as European calls are supposed to stay in Europe. This is what Zoom calls its data center “geofencing.” But when traffic spikes, the network shifts traffic to the nearest data center with the most available capacity.

China, however, is supposed to be an exception, largely due to privacy concerns among Western companies. But China’s own laws and regulations mandate that companies operating on the mainland must keep citizens’ data within its borders. April 03 - TechCrunch

If you’re a journalist covering this topic, there’s still quite a few questions to be asked?

• What do users need to know about these platforms for meetings?
• Is there any information that shouldn’t be shared?
• Are there ways to guarantee enhanced security?
• And in these extraordinary times, does the risk outweigh the reward for businesses looking to carry on and stay afloat?

If you’re asking – we’re here to help.

Yoris A. Au is chair of the Department of Information Systems at Georgia Southern University. He is an expert in the areas of cyber security and telecommunications. Yoris is available to speak with media regarding this topic – simply click on his icon to arrange an interview.