As Zoom navigates a sharp increase in users and subsequent privacy issues on its popular videoconferencing platform, the company has now established a CISO council and advisory board to guide its cybersecurity framework, according to a Zoom blog post from CEO Eric Yuan.
The CISO council will work with Zoom to tackle privacy, security and technology issues. Within the council, Zoom created an advisory board that will assist Mr. Yuan directly with privacy and security initiatives. Initial members of the board include security leaders from Netflix and Uber.
The COVID-19 pandemic has driven a dramatic influx in users of Zoom's platform as more people transition to working remotely. At the end of 2019, Zoom had around 10 million users; that number has now spiked to 200 million users, according to The Wall Street Journal. Zoom initially said it provided end-to-end encryption to safeguard conversations on its platform, but security experts discovered that the technology did not provide that level of protection.
To address these cybersecurity issues, Zoom has also tapped Alex Stamos, former chief security officer at Facebook, as an outside advisor. Mr. Stamos is currently an adjunct professor at Stanford University's Freeman-Spogli Institute and a contributor to Harvard's Defending Digital Democracy project. He will oversee a third-party security review of Zoom's platform.
Zoom on April 1 also rolled out a 90-day plan to address its cybersecurity issues, including creating the CISO council and advisory board and launching the third-party review. The company is also preparing a transparency report that shows information about requests for data, records and content.