Question

Recently the videoconferencing software Zoom has been featured in the news. a. What are the current issues surrounding the usage of this software? b. Describe the roles of firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and antimalware software in promoting security. c. Explain how encryption protects information.

Answer 1

( a )

The video-conferencing app, Zoom, saw its users increase drastically after the COVID-19 pandemic forced lockdown forced people and businesses to work from home.

The current issues surrounding the usage of this software is security flaws in the application, no end to end encryption, surveillance by the firm, hacking of the application in the middle of a meeting, selling of users data etc. In a nutshell the application has been accused of being privacy disaster.

( b )

Firewall's role is to limit the risk of privacy invasion by being a barrier to the hackers and other cyber criminals. It reduces the visible attack surface to the attackers. It controls connections coming in a network so that only the connections that are allowed can get through.

IDS ( Intrusion Detection System ) is a device or a software application that detects vulnerability and blocks it from entering the protected system and reports it to the administrator. It is a very important part of cyber security in modern times.

Anti-malware software- As the name suggests, anti-malware software is a software application which is designed to prevent, detect and remove malicious software from computing devices and other such IT systems. It provides protection against all kinds of viruses.

( c )

Encryption is the process of taking data that could be a plain text, like a text message or email, and scrambling it into an unreadable format — called “cipher text.”

Encryption helps protect the confidentiality of digital data either stored on computer systems or transmitted through a network like the internet.

As mentioned above, Zoom doesn't provide end to end encryption on its platform which makes the users data vulnerable to be detected and used by cyber criminals, hackers or even government surveillance.