Companies, administrations and private individuals often rely on video conferencing in the times of Corona. Curfews and bans on contacts hardly allow personal contact anymore, so talking over the Internet is a possible alternative.
Many providers have noticed the trend and video conferencing programs are more in demand today than ever. Classics like Skype or Apple’s Facetime are often heavy software packages or mainly in the mobile area on the phone useable. In the past few weeks, some video conference programs have made a name for themselves and advertise with quick and easy setup of video chats and a simple operation.
Zoom quickly established itself as a new star in the video conferencing market and contested ‘Skype’ its position as top dog.
- A list of current video conferencing programs can be found below.
Security issues and questionable data policy
Analysts has found that the video conferencing platform Zoom has to deal with security gaps and data leaks. Researchers found that Zoom uses the encryption software OpenSSL 1.0.2, which has been out of support since 2018, and also uses vulnerable versions of libcurl (7.55.1) and libssh2. Zoom is therefore open to threats for attackers. In addition, Zoom sold user data to Facebook.
- (Source: Deutschlandfunk.de [https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/jitsi-und-big-blue-button-open-source-angebote-fuer.684.de.html?dram:article_id = 476375])
Zoom chief engineer admitted:
- “I think that was our mistake. It happened unintentionally. We focused on security and a simple, smooth user experience and didn’t notice the Facebook SDK exchanging device information.”
The video conferencing market is growing
There are now a number of providers of meeting tools. Many of them are open source and can be used without registration. But which tool is the right one?
There are hardly any differences. Almost all providers rely on web-based solutions and offer video and screen sharing. Limits in terms of duration and participants are present, but are no longer appropriate due to the large number of competitors. It will show whether the security problems of some providers can be solved in the next few months in order to keep the market large and the selection wide - especially in times of the corona virus everything else is unacceptable.
Overview of video conference programs
| Program | Website / Download |
|---|---|
| Skype | https://www.skype.com |
| Google hangouts | https://hangouts.google.com |
| Apple Facetime | iPhone, iPad, … |
| Cisco webex | https://www.webex.com/video-conferencing.html |
| MS teams | https://www.microsoft.com/teams |
| BigBlueButton | https://bigbluebutton.org |
| —— | —— |
| Zoom | https://zoom.us |
| jitsi | https://jitsi.org |