Zooming to the Top
Tuesday 16th June 2020
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom has become a household name. The platform has grown so substantially since the start of the crisis, that the estimated net worth of its founder, Eric Yuan, has increased by $4bn+ (The Guardian, 2020).
This platform, with currently unrestricted access due to the pandemic, allows for virtual schooling, webinars, corporate meetings, and even pub quizzes. With the exponential increase in demand after lockdown ensued, millions of people around the world are now using the platform for their everyday needs and social interactions. Zoom’s great branding, comprehensive user interface and simplicity have meant that it has become a dominant force in the technology market.
Zoom Video Communications has experienced extensive growth, with shares now sitting at $219.52 (as of 15 June, 07:27 GMT-4) (Nasdaq: ZM). Prior to lockdown across the West, shares were under $70 in January (The Guardian, 2020), therefore making this growth significant, with the market value of Zoom now averaging $58bn (BBC, 2020). To put this into perspective, this is now a larger market capitalisation than the world’s 7 biggest airlines (Visual Capitalist, 2020). Last year’s revenue sat at $623m (Visual Capitalist, 2020), but due to the pandemic, expected forecasts for this time period have ended up being double what was expected, with revenue reaching potential highs of $1.8bn (BBC, 2020).
In regard to commercial law firms, this platform has ranged in its uses from corporate meetings between firms and clients, to graduate recruitment hosting virtual open days and webinars, such as the firm Latham & Watkins’ new initiative of ‘Learning with Latham’, which provides practice area insights, Q&A sessions and case study exercises. Furthermore, many law firms have now moved their recruitment processes, insight and vacation schemes to this online platform.
Zoom has also initiated the precedent of agile, or remote, working. Whilst agile working has been a recent initiative that commercial law firms have adopted, this time period has been proof that much of this corporate work has the ability to be transitioned to online. From numerous LinkedIn polls, it has been found that many solicitors have been advocating for the move to remote work, as well as office work. This could be of great benefit to clients if this were to be the case, as with reduced offices, comes reduced overhead costs, and thus legal fees. Some firms, such as the national firm Slater and Gordon, will be permanently shutting their London office in September at the end of the lease, with a view to finding a smaller office for meetings.
However, with these benefits, comes great technological and thus confidentiality risk. For one, it has been noted that there has been ‘zoombombing’, whereby hackers are able to drop into calls and show explicit images to the call hosts and attendees. Furthermore, Zoom (in some cases) is not end-to-end encrypted, like it was once thought, therefore meaning that confidential data could be at risk for all parties (see the below link for more information*). There is also the risk of the Company Directory becoming public, which would allow for data such as emails and photos to be leaked. This general lack of security has meant that even a simple automated tool is capable of gaining access to confidential calls. However, despite this, Zoom remains a predominant platform for interaction, with growth skyrocketing.
In light of these constraints, the company has called on a 90-day freeze, where they will address these data-risk issues. Initial action has resulted in attendee tracking being removed as of 2 April 2020, for example, in line with the company’s pledge for better privacy and confidentiality within the platform.
That being said, Zoom has now announced that those who use the platform (unregistered) for free will not have the advantage of encrypted calls, with users in the near future having to verify their accounts in order to access this end-to-end encryption. Whilst it has been announced by Zoom that this is necessary for compliance with the FBI in case of malicious action, the marketing intentions of this are yet to be seen (Forbes, 2020).
*https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/04/01/facts-around-zoom-encryption-for-meetings-webinars/
