Last checked at 
(Adds Google's ban, Berkeley High School suspension of app and
comments, background, updates share price)
By Supantha Mukherjee, Akanksha Rana and Stephen Nellis
April 8 (Reuters) - Zoom Video Communications Inc has
tapped former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos as an adviser
to improve the privacy and security of its rapidly growing
video-conferencing app amid a global backlash, including a move
by Alphabet Inc's Google to ban the desktop version of
Zoom from corporate laptops.
At about the same time, officials at California's Berkeley
High School said they suspended the use of Zoom after a "naked
adult male using racial slurs" intruded on what the school said
was a password-protected meeting, according to a letter to
parents seen by Reuters.
A school district spokeswoman said it was possible that a
password had been shared, allowing the intrusion, but that the
entire Berkeley school district was pausing for at least "a few
days" Zoom to consider how to use and train for
videoconferencing.
Coronavirus lockdowns led to surging use of Zoom this year,
but in recent weeks concerns rose about the lack of end-to-end
encryption of meeting sessions, routing of traffic through China
and "zoombombing," where uninvited guests crashed meetings.
Zoom shares were up 3.8% in late trade on Wednesday. They
had crashed by a third in the past 10 days.
Zoom attracted users with its ease of use, as well as free
offering. Many schools around the world also started using it
for online classes.
In a series of tweets https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1245197038083428352a
in late March, Stamos called on Zoom to be more transparent and
roll out a 30-day security plan. That led to a call from the
platform's founder and chief executive officer, Eric Yuan,
asking him to weigh in as an outside consultant.
"Zoom has some important work to do in core application
security, cryptographic design and infrastructure security, and
I'm looking forward to working with Zoom's engineering teams on
those projects," Stamos, now an adjunct professor at Stanford
University, wrote in a blog post https://medium.com/@alexstamos/working-on-security-and-safety-with-zoom-2f61f197cb34
on Wednesday.
Taiwan and Germany have put restrictions on its use, while
Elon Musk's SpaceX has banned the app over security concerns.
The company has also been slapped with a class-action lawsuit.
On Wednesday, Google, which has a competing product, said it
was taking Zoom off workers' computers because of security
concerns. A Google spokesman said that employees could still use
the mobile and browser-based versions of Zoom.
"It would be in Zoom's best interests to conduct a full
scale investigation into the security lapses and provide a
report of whether or not the lapses led to an actual
compromise," said Theresa Payton, a former White House Chief
Information Officer and currently CEO of Fortalice Solutions.
To address the concerns, Zoom has embarked on a 90-day plan
https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/04/08/update-on-zoom-90-day-plan-to-bolster-key-privacy-and-security-initiatives
and has formed a CISO Council, which includes chief information
security officers of HSBC, NTT Data, Procore
and Ellie Mae, to discuss about privacy, security and
technology issues.
It has also set up a board to advise CEO Yuan on privacy
issues. The initial members include executives from VMware
, Netflix, Uber and Electronic Arts
.
"I would think, however, that whatever issues Mr Stamos and
advisory board identify will take more than 90 days to fix,
revise, or change in the network," said Summit Insights Group
analyst Jonathan Kees.
Zoom, which competes with Microsoft's Teams and
Cisco's Webex, has seen daily users jump to 200 million
from 10 million and the stock surged to a record high in March.
(Reporting by Akanksha Rana and Supantha Mukherjee in
Bengaluru, Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Additional reporting
to Raphael Satter in Washington; Editing by Peter Henderson and
Marguerita Choy)
