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By Juliet Umeh

The dreaded Coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19 may have ravaged world economies through the lock-down containment strategy every country has adopted. However, that, has also drawn closer technological advancements, the world was waiting to unfold in the next five years.

Following the lock down directives by governments of different countries, religious, corporate and non-corporate organisations have resorted to remote working system, where Church services and office meetings are mostly held online.

Before now, online meetings have remained elitist, due to the cost involved in the facilities to make it happen.

In addition to the cost, the practice appears alien to most organisations, particularly in the developing economies. Corporate organisations like Microsoft who have seen the future of technology in work places have invested billions of dollars in the emerging markets trying to introduce remote working models and solutions without much progress. But the COVID-19 pandemic has made it all possible in less than three months.

From the blues, San Jose, California, based Zoom Video Communications, Inc., introduced a cheaper but effective cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars, called Zoom.

The platform is free for video conferences of up to 100 participants, with a 40-minute time limit. Although a paid subscriptions cost of between $15–20 per month is attached to longer or larger conferences with more features, even smaller organizations have found the platform as a new way of carrying out effective remote working strategy.

According to the company, the adoption of the application globally has grew from 10 million daily users to 200 million daily users in March.

However, that has brought some disturbing occurrences with it as security issues have also grown through it in recent times.

READ ALSO: World Medical Association condemns attacks on health care professionals

Latest reports indicate that individual and organisational zoom accounts are been hacked and data sold on the dark web for less than a dollar.

Cybersecurity Intelligence firm, Cyble, is reported to have bought about 530,000 Zoom account credentials sold by hackers when it noticed the activity. Although the organisation said it did that with the intention to set the accounts free for the users, it has eventually exposed zoom as vulnerable.

Zoom, CEO Eric Yuan, said his company was aware of the security issues and breaches in its platform and was hard at work to fix it.

He also apologized for the adverse effects it had on clients who used the app to keep business communications going.

The method of zoom hacking is called ‘zoombombing’. This means that people without the right zoom credentials can drop in on calls and video meetings to spy or harass the participants of the meeting.

Safety tips

*One measure is to avoid using the same password that has been used for other accounts for your zoom account.

*Another measure is to host private meetings only and have people wait for you to add them to meetings.

*Additionally, do not use personal meeting ID to create Zoom video links. This is because if the link becomes public, anyone can join the video call and hijack your meeting.

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