Zoom App Is Not Safe Platform – Economics

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Recently, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has issued an advisory that Zoom video conference is not a safe platform.
The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) of the MHA issued a set of guidelines for the safe usage of Zoom by private individuals.
Zoom has seen an exponential rise in usage in India.
Over 90,000 schools across 20 countries have started using it regularly.
The maximum number of daily meeting participants of approximately 10 million at the end of December 2019 grew to more than 200 million daily meeting participants in March.
It has been used extensively by everyone including the central and state ministers for official purposes and conducting meetings.
Zoom is a US-based video communication and videoconferencing platform.
This Silicon Valley-based company appears to own three companies in China.
This arrangement is apparently an effort at labor arbitrage in which Zoom can avoid paying US wages while selling to US customers, thus increasing their profit margin.
However, this arrangement may make Zoom responsive to pressure from Chinese authorities.
Reportedly, few calls made through the app are routed through servers in China.
Earlier, the Computer Emergency Response Team, India (CERT-In) had also issued advisories cautioning on the use of Zoom for office meetings.
It warned that the insecure usage of the platform may allow cyber criminals to access sensitive information such as meeting details and conversations giving rise to cyber frauds.
It also highlighted multiple vulnerabilities which could allow an attacker to gain elevated privileges or obtain sensitive information.
Citizen Lab, based at the University of Toronto, found significant weakness in Zoom’s encryption that protects meetings.
It identified the transmission of meeting encryption keys through China.
The lab has raised two primary concerns- geo-fencing and meeting encryption.
Zoom Founder and CEO Eric S Yuan has apologised and assured the people that the privacy and security expectations would be taken care of.
Zoom has added additional features such as placing a new security icon in the meeting controls, changing Zoom’s default settings and enhancing meeting password complexity, among others.
It has also added that soon, account admins will have the ability to choose whether or not their data is routed through specific data center regions.
Suggestions by the Ministry
The users are suggested to set strong passwords and enable “waiting room” features so that call managers could have better control over the participants.
Users should also avoid using personal meeting ID to host events and instead use randomly generated meeting IDs for each event.
People using the app should not share meeting links on public platforms.

Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre

The scheme to set up I4C was approved in October 2018, to deal with all types of cybercrimes in a comprehensive and coordinated manner.
Various States and Union Territories (UTs) have consented to set up Regional Cyber Crime Coordination Centres.
This state-of-the-art Centre is located in New Delhi.
It has seven components:
National Cyber Crime Threat Analytics Unit
National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal
National Cyber Crime Training Centre
Cyber Crime Ecosystem Management Unit
National Cyber Crime Research and Innovation Centre
National Cyber Crime Forensic Laboratory Ecosystem
Platform for Joint Cyber Crime Investigation Team.

Computer Emergency Response Team-India

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology
Objective of securing Indian cyberspace.
It is the nodal agency which deals with cybersecurity threats like hacking and phishing.
It collects, analyses and disseminates information on cyber incidents, and also issues alerts on cybersecurity incidents.