Business info - issue 144

businessinfomag.uk magazine 26 COLLABORATION Communication and collaboration practices were changing before the COVID-19 pandemic, but they have accelerated rapidly since. A Futuresource Consulting survey of 2,500 end users in the UK, USA, Germany and France highlighted a growing trend for more frequent, more informal meetings, with nearly 40% of companies – twice as many as in 2018 – reporting that employees regularly hold meetings in ad hoc spaces like kitchens, foyers and reception areas. This trend has been turbo-charged by COVID-19, albeit in the virtual sphere, with near universal take-up of informal video meeting solutions as home workers desperate to see and interact with colleagues (and friends and family) have taken advantage of free conferencing solutions to video- call from garden offices, kitchens and bedrooms. The stats say it all: n Lifesize’s new user registrations in March were 5000% higher than in previous months, with global Lifesize call volume up 500%; n 8x8 has seen a 75-fold increase in users of its instant video call solution, from 200,000 global users to 16 million; n less than two months after COVID had spread toWestern Europe, the daily average conferencing traffic for BlueJeans meetings had increased by 289% in the UK, with even greater increases in Germany and Spain; n in March, Cisco saw a 7-fold increase in take-up of the free version of its Seeing is believing Webex collaboration platform in countries affected by COVID-19, with 240,000 online sign-ups in 24 hours and a record 14 billion meeting minutes – 24 times more minutes than normal; n Starleaf has announced a 947% increase in weekly minutes from UK calls since January, with Manchester recording the biggest daily increase in call volumes (more than 3000%), followed by Birmingham (2500%) and Bristol (2000%). Zoom phenomenon Most striking of all has been the performance of Zoom, which has seen the number of daily meeting participants in its platform increase from 10 million in December 2019 to 200 million in March, growing again to 300 million in April. This, despite widely publicised security weaknesses that have allowed hackers to unleash malware attacks, compromise privacy and gate-crash meetings in a practice now known as Zoom-bombing. Zoom certainly has questions to answer, which it has attempted to do through a new release (Zoom 5), featuring support for AES 256-bit GCM encryption, and the announcement of a 90-day plan to bolster key privacy and security initiatives. So, too, do its users, many of whom have displayed a remarkably cavalier attitude to security. Risk management company Turnkey Consulting points out that Zoom already has security features offering a high level of protection. It advises Zoom users to make the following changes in Settings: 1 Require a password for new meetings. This will prevent unwelcome guests from being able to join the call, as long as they haven’t been invited and been provided with the password. 2 Set screen sharing to ‘host only’. This will prevent anyone randomly taking control of the screen to share something inappropriate. 3 Disable file transfer. This will stop the spread of malicious files, should an uninvited guest manage to join the call. 4 Disable ‘Join before host’. This will prevent a participant joining before the host arrives and exploiting the controls. There is also the option to use the ‘Waiting Room’ feature, which automatically places attendees in a virtual room before the host admits them to the call. 5 Disable ‘Allow removed participants to re-join’. Turning off this feature will prevent guests who have been removed from re-joining the call. Productivity drain There have also been questions about the effect of video meetings on productivity. In the Wundamail Work from Home 2020 report,Wundamail Research claims that pointless video meetings are costing businesses more than £1,000 per employee per month. Although almost half (45%) of the With millions of workers experiencing video meetings for the first time, are we entering a new era of collaboration? Meet Meet Google is providing its Google Meet video meeting solution for free to anyone with a Google account, including @gmail.com users. Recently rebranded from Google Hangouts Meet, it was previously only available as part of the G Suite for business and education customers. Google is positioning Meet as a more secure alternative to Zoom, highlighting a range of ‘default-on’ safety measures, such as the ability for hosts to admit or deny entry to a meeting and mute or remove participants; the barring of anonymous users (i.e. those without a Google Account) from joining meetings created by individual accounts; and the encryption of video meetings in transit and recordings stored in Google Drive in transit and at rest. Google account holders can use Meet to schedule, join or start secure video meetings with anyone, on the web at meet.google. com and via mobile apps for iOS or Android. It will also be possible to start or join a Meet meeting from Gmail or Google Calendar. Meeting length is unlimited until September 30, after which there will be a limit of 60 minutes for the free product. For business and education users, Meet will be available via G Suite or a new G Suite Essentials offering. Free of charge until September 30, G Suite Essentials gives access to Meet’s more advanced features, such as dial-in phone numbers, larger meetings and meeting recording, as well as Google Drive for storing and accessing content and Docs, Sheets and Slides for content creation and real-time collaboration.