• State-sponsored attackers crafted convincing fake video calls to target cryptocurrency firms
• A clipboard hijack trick replaced benign commands with malware‑deploying code
• The operation enabled rapid credential theft, persistence, and full system compromise

Security researchers Arctic Wolf have revealed details of a highly sophisticated campaign targeting North American Web3 and cryptocurrency companies.

It is conducted by state-sponsored threat actors called BlueNoroff, a financially motivated subgroup of the dreaded North Korean Lazarus Group, with a goal of establishing persistent access on their target’s devices.

They do so by tricking the victim into installing malware on the computers themselves, but the way they do it is quite advanced.

ClicFix has entered the chat

While preparing for the attack, the threat actors would use real, high-value people from the Web3 world, generate convincing headshots using ChatGPT, and create semi-animated videos using Adobe Premiere Pro 2021.

They would then create a fake Zoom video call website identical to the actual Zoom call page, and would display the video to make it look even more convincing.

BlueNoroff would then invite the actual victim through Calendly, almost half a year into the future (most likely to make it look more convincing - important people are, after all, super busy).

When the victim clicks on the Zoom link, they see what they’re used to seeing - a video call page with the person on the other side moving and acting as if they were real. However, eight seconds into the call, a message would pop up across the screen, saying their “SDK is deprecated” and presenting them with an “Update Now” button.

The button leads to a typical ClickFix technique - to “fix” the problem, the victim needs to copy and paste a command. But since many are now aware of these attacks, BlueNoroff takes it a step further - the code being copied is actually legitimate and benign.

However, the fake Zoom website has a malicious JavaScript application embedded which handles the “copy” action, intercepts the clipboard event in the browser, and replaces what the user thinks they copied with different code.

That code, if executed, deploys malware on the device which establishes remote access to the system, allows BlueNoroff to exfiltrate credentials, session tokens, and other sensitive business data, and grants them the ability to move laterally throughout the network.

“The technical execution chain in this campaign is both efficient and operationally disciplined,” Arctic Wolf said. “From initial URL click to full system compromise, including C2 establishment, Telegram session theft, browser credential harvesting, and persistence, the attacker completed in under five minutes.”

• "I hate working five days," Zoom CEO Eric Yuan declares
• We could see three-day working weeks becoming the norm within five years
• Zoom's hybrid working policies are also among the most flexible in Big Tech

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has said he believes AI tools could significantly reduce the standard working week, from five days to three days.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Yuan argued AI agents and automation could handle the repetitive, administrative tasks that workers often get bogged down with.

If they spend the same amount of time as they do on meaningful work, without having to waste time on tedious tasks, they could free up hours every single week, he noted.

Does Zoom advocate a three-day working week?

With agentic AI drastically improving output and productivity, Yuan envisions a world where the five-day working week could become obsolete.

"I hate working five days," he said about himself in the interview.

"I’m pretty sure actually we really do not need to work for five days," the CEO added, suggesting we could see three-day weeks appearing as soon as five years from now.

Yuan isn't the only leader predicting positive impacts on workers' time from AI – JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and OpenAI leader Sam Altman have also set out expectations for shorter working weeks.

Ultimately, Yuan sees this as a positive thing for work-life balance, however he also acknowledges that some jobs, especially entry-level roles, could be displaced by those exact AI-induced productivity gains.

"We can enjoy the beach time, but we want the kids [to] still find something new, exciting to work [on]," he added, indicating that gained time shouldn't be exclusively for downtime.

Instead, it would present a perfect opportunity for workers to upskill and prepare for future working trends.

As for the company itself, Zoom is one of the most flexible in Big Tech, generally requiring workers onsite twice per week and offering remote opportunities for those who live further from offices.

• Zoom AI Companion 3.0 promises to be a more proactive agentic platform
• 'My Notes' meeting summaries and 'Personal Workflows' automations are coming
• AI Companion also has more context to your resources to make it more reliable

Zoom has announced s series of upgrades to its agentic AI suite in a bid to help users save more time on repetitive and administrative tasks.

The company describes Zoom AI Companion as a shift "from reactive support to proactive intelligence," hoping it can anticipate users' needs.

AI Companion is included with pair Zoom Workplace accounts, or it can be added separately to other plans, and free users can also trial some of the features within monthly limitations set out by the company.

Zoom AI Companion is now more "proactive"

The online collaboration platform's agentic 'My Notes' tool is designed to be platform-agnostic, working across Zoom Meetings, Teams and Google Meet calls, and even in-person meetings. Apart from taking notes and summarizing interactions, it also creates personalized notes that would be more relevant to the specific user.

A second tool, 'Personal Workflows', will automate some repetitive tasks and follow-ups for users, who can set it up via natural language instructions. Zoom also offers role-based templates to start from, but the overarching hope is that workers without the technical expertise can set up their own agents with Personal Workflows.

One example of a custom agent given by Zoom is: "After every client call, automatically draft a follow-up email with key discussion points and send it within 30 minutes."

"With AI Companion, people can move beyond managing work to truly accelerate their impact and shift from reactive productivity to proactive intelligence, where technology doesn’t just support work, it elevates it," AI Head of Product Lijuan Qin wrote.

Some other improvements have also been made to AI Companion to give it more context, including image upload support and access to Team Chat conversations.

"The era of reactive productivity is over," the company boldly concluded.

• Zoom is adding even more AI into its ecosystem to help workers with extra automation
• Workplace AI head calls for "intelligent, connected environments"
• Video is also getting an upgrade to 60fps

Zoom is updating Zoom Spaces to become an AI-first "intelligent office" powered by agentic AI systems to automate administrative tasks like booking rooms.

One of the new features Zoom is keen to highlight is proactive recommendations within Workspace Reservation, which helps employees optimize their in-office time and operate some Zoom Rooms and meeting features hands-free.

With the AI-powered upgrades, Zoom hopes to solve some of the most common frustrations workers have in the office, like inconsistent room tech and disconnected tools.

Zoom Spaces integrates AI into your working day – not just your work

"AI has become a central part of our digital workday, and in order to be successful, organizations need to harness its power to transform workspaces into intelligent, connected environments that can adapt to people’s needs" Workplace AI, Meetings and Spaces Head Jeff Smith explained.

As part of its continued move to reposition itself as an AI-first collaboration ecosystem rather than the video conferencing platform we came to know it as, the company is also working with more third parties to put its tools into the hands of more workers, adding Zoom Meetings to certain Cisco hardware and bringing Vizrt onboard with its ISV Exchange program.

The broader ecosystem is also getting handy new updates, like support for 60fps, higher bit-rate and higher bandwidth on calls for sharper and clearer calls.

And in recognition that many hybrid workers prefer a mobile-first experience, the company also expected Workspace Reservation to go live on the mobile app by late February 2026.

"Adding AI to physical spaces helps teams maximize office use, increase collaboration, and drive meaningful business impact," Smith concluded.

The launch of Zoom AI Companion 3.0 in December also implies that Zoom will continue to roll out "AI-first capabilities for personal workflows" across the entire ecosystem as it continues to evolve beyond the video calling app it used to be.

• France will replace Microsoft Teams and Zoom with domestic Visio platform
• Visio has been tested for a year and supports forty thousand users
• Visio’s AI transcription and speaker diarization are powered by French start-up Pyannote

The French government is replacing Microsoft Teams and Zoom with a domestically-developed video conferencing platform named Visio as part of a broader strategy to reduce reliance on foreign software vendors - particularly from the US.

The switch is scheduled to roll out across all government departments by 2027 after officials cited concerns about security, data sovereignty, and the potential for foreign surveillance as primary motivations for the move.

The government noted switching to Visio could result in major cost savings and estimated a reduction of roughly €1 million per year for every 100,000 users.

Sovereign digital ecosystem

Visio has been in testing for about a year and already supports around 40,000 users within French government networks.

It is a central part of France’s Suite Numérique plan to provide civil servants with online collaboration tools to replace American online services.

Unlike commercial platforms, Visio and its associated tools are intended exclusively for government use.

It is hosted on Outscale’s sovereign cloud, a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, which ensures all user data remains within French jurisdiction.

This infrastructure is expected to limit exposure to foreign network outages and potential regulatory pressures that have previously affected European reliance on US cloud providers.

Visio also incorporates AI-powered capabilities, including meeting transcription and speaker diarization, developed in conjunction with the French start-up Pyannote.

Visio forms part of a wider effort to integrate office software and productivity tool alternatives into government workflows.

By adopting local options, the French administration aims to create an internally coherent ecosystem capable of replacing multiple foreign applications.

The change also reflects a broader European concern about reliance on US IT infrastructure, especially after major cloud outages last year.

“The aim is to end the use of non-European solutions and guarantee the security and confidentiality of public electronic communications by relying on a powerful and sovereign tool,” said David Amiel, minister for the civil service and state reform.

“This strategy highlights France's commitment to digital sovereignty amid rising geopolitical tensions and fears of foreign surveillance or service disruptions.”

While the move prioritizes security and data sovereignty, implementation will require extensive coordination and training.

Government IT departments must integrate Visio with existing internal systems and ensure continuity of service during the transition.

Visio will offer more control, but its ability to fully match the functionality and scalability of established commercial platforms remains uncertain.

Via Euronews

• Zoom is building its next data center in the UK – it’s set to open in 2026
• Most core functions will be supported from launch
• It’s all in an effort to meet data residency requirements

Zoom has confirmed plans to open its very own data center in the UK as part of its broader efforts to meet data sovereignty and residency requirements, particularly those of the public sector, healthcare, financial services and other highly regulated industries.

The company’s UK data center will support Meetings, Webinars, Rooms, Team Chat, Phone, Notes, Docs and Zoom AI Companion from launch, but Zoom has already committed to adding Contact Center at a later date.

“By investing in local infrastructure, we are ensuring that organizations across the UK… can confidently embrace the future of AI‑first collaboration,” Zoom UK&I Head Louise Newbury-Smith explained.

Zoom UK data center

In a blog post, Zoom explained the UK is “one of Zoom’s most dynamic and forward-thinking regions” that consistently ranks as a top EMEA market. The company also acknowledged the UK’s commitment to hybrid work.

EMEA & APAC Head Steve Rafferty alluded to the influence of customer feedback on the company’s decision to launch a UK data center: “Our customers and partners have been clear: local infrastructure, compliance and greater choice over where their data is stored are critical to unlocking digital transformation in regulated industries.”

The news comes around 18 months after Zoom opened its Experience Center in London, described as a “hub for innovation, executive briefings and hands-on demonstrations.”

Zoom already operates a number of other infrastructure hubs across EMEA, including in Saudi Arabia, Germany and the Netherlands.

Investing in the UK is also a safe move for Zoom – the government recently designated data centers as Critical National Infrastructure (CNI), both underscoring their importance and also adding extra layers of protection.

Zoom expects its data center to open in the first half of 2026. The UK government has not publicly commented on Zoom’s investment.

• Zoom CEO Eric Yuan believes AI will help reshape the future of work
• AI assistants could help reduce workloads and give people shorter workweeks
• Zoom has a new partnership with Nvidia which aims to make its AI tools faster and smarter

For many people, Zoom first became part of daily life during the Covid-19 lockdowns, when video conferencing calls replaced in-person meetings and remote work became routine.

Now Zoom’s founder and CEO Eric Yuan says we can soon look forward to having our working life reshaped yet again, this time by AI tools giving us shorter weeks.

Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, Yuan said AI assistants could eventually reduce the need for five-day work schedules.

Three-day working week

“Today, I need to manually focus on all those products to get work done. Eventually, AI will help,” Yuan said.

“By doing that, we do not need to work five days a week anymore, right? … Five years out, three days or four days [a week]. That’s a goal,” he said.

Yuan’s optimism centers on Zoom’s growing integration of AI. The company is developing features like “digital twins” - virtual avatars that can attend meetings or calls on a person’s behalf.

Earlier this year, Zoom demonstrated the technology with Yuan using his own AI avatar during an investor earnings call. He said the system showcased how far AI can push “the boundaries of communication.”

Yuan said Zoom spends a lot of time discussing AI strategy. When asked about where he’s investing most heavily, his answer was simple: “AI, AI, and AI.”

Zoom’s broader AI push also includes work with Nvidia to improve performance across its AI Companion features.

The partnership focuses on speeding up reasoning and automation tools designed to help users spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on creative or strategic work.

The potential, according to Yuan, goes far beyond virtual meetings. He described scenarios where AI companions could handle negotiations or preliminary planning between business leaders, saving human participants from lengthy calls.

He also suggested that AI could review emails, highlight urgent messages, and assist across other parts of Zoom’s online collaboration platform, including whiteboards and collaborative documents.

For a platform that defined remote work during the pandemic, Zoom’s next evolution appears to be less about connecting people and more about standing in for them.

• Zoom reveals new AI developments, including AI Companion 3.0
• Its AI note-taking tool will also finally work across Google Meet and Microsoft Teams
• “Lifelike” AI avatars are coming to a meeting near you

Zoom introduced AI Companion 3.0, the latest evolution of its AI tools platform designed to speed up tedious tasks, and offering a host of personalization options.

The company saus AI Companion’s main capabilities center around turning conversations into actions, gaining context from meetings, chats, calls and emails.

But for the first time, Zoom’s AI agents will also work across other video conferencing tools such as Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and WebEx, aiming to make them even more useful.

Zoom’s AI Companion keeps getting better

A big thumbs up for the interoperability police, Zoom’s AI tools are set to work across Teams and Google Meet as early as September 2025, with WebEx support expected at a later date.

Note-taking will also work in in-person meetings, and users can leverage agentic retrieval to find organizational information more quickly to add further context.

“With AI Companion 3.0, our agentic AI can understand users’ specific context, priorities, and goals to help them cut through the noise, focus on what matters most, and drive meaningful business outcomes,” CEO Eric S Yuan said.

Among the long list of other improvements being made to Zoom’s AI ecosystem were a series of upgrades to video conferencing, so you’ll no longer have an excuse not to turn up to those pesky meetings.

Zoom described its upcoming AI-generated photorealistic avatars as “lifelike” and the perfect solution for calls when participants might not quite be “camera-ready.”

This comes as companies are set to unlock 60fps frame rates and support for multiple simultaneous HD streams. Zoom Rooms with wired HDMI connections will build on this with 1080p/60fps and 4K content sharing beginning December 2025.

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• Campaign targeted more than 900 companies with sophisticated phishing lures
• The goal was to deploy a remote monitoring and management tool
• Hackers are shifting goals and priorities and businesses must adapt

More than 900 organizations have been targeted by a highly convincing phishing attack which sought to deploy a legitimate remote monitoring and management (RMM) solution and gain access to target endpoints without raising any alarms.

A new report from security researchers at Abnormal claimed criminals would use compromised email accounts and conversation threads, AI-generated phishing pages, and would abuse legitimate file-sharing video conferencing platforms to spoof Zoom and Microsoft Teams with authentic-looking emails.

The goal was to get the victims to install ConnectWise ScreenConnect, a legitimate IT tool repurposed for full remote access. Instead of stealing passwords, attackers lure victims into giving them administrator-level control over corporate systems. Once inside, they launch account takeovers, lateral phishing campaigns, and data theft while blending in with normal IT activity.

Targeting education and religious groups

Among the 900 companies attacked so far, the researchers found the majority were in education and religious groups (14.4%), healthcare and pharma (9.7%), and financial services (9.4%), with other industries like insurance, legal, retail, manufacturing, and tech, also being heavily targeted. Most victims are in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.

The attacks are powered by a dark web marketplace that sells ScreenConnect “attack kits” for a few thousand dollars, along with network access resold for $500–$2,000.

Some vendors even offer $6,000 custom packages with training and support, effectively turning ScreenConnect abuse into a RAT-as-a-Service business model.

This campaign highlights a dangerous shift, Abnormal believes. Instead of breaking into systems, threat actors are now weaponizing trusted workplace tools to sidestep defenses.

That is why businesses should adopt AI-powered email security, endpoint monitoring, zero-trust, and better staff awareness training, to counter these increasingly sophisticated threats.

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• Virtual Agent for Zoom Phone can handle customer calls 24/7 without human input
• The no-code tool is trained from existing company docs and websites
• AI Companion takes the stress out of scheduling meetings

Zoom has lifted the wraps off Virtual Agent for Zoom Phone, allowing companies can now use a 24/7 AI concierge to replace or support existing receptionists.

The AI agent promises to greet callers naturally, process requests and initiate next steps without any human intervention, helping to reduce missed calls and hold times.

Available from launch in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Japanese (with more languages to come), Zoom says its Virtual Agent is capable of efficiently routing calls autonomously, getting customers one step closer to a resolution without the need for a human to pick up the phone.

Zoom's Virtual Agent is a digital receptionist

"By combining AI that can listen, understand, and take action with the reach of Zoom Phone, our concierge virtual agent provides seamless and personalized support to all callers,” Zoom Chief Product Officer Smita Hashim explained.

Zoom highlighted how companies can leverage the Virtual Agent's immense time-saving powers without any expertise thanks to the no-code setup – instead, they can simply train the agent by uploading existing documents or pointing to a website.

"The result is a faster, more personalized, and more scalable experience for everyone," Hashim added.

Some of the use cases highlighted by Zoom include booking appointments in healthcare, confirming stock and answering product questions in retail and providing updates in financial services.

At the same time, Zoom added new agentic AI capabilities to its AI Companion feature, including a tool that handles meeting scheduling by finding suitable times, coordinating invites, tracking responses and suggesting alternatives.

In the press release, the company noted that AI Companion now goes even further to "[give] teams more time to focus on the discussion itself, not the logistics."

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• Zoom warns multiple versions of its Windows client are vulnerable
• A security flaw can be used to fully take over target endpoints
• Zoom advises patching immediately, so users should update now

Zoom has patched a critical severity vulnerability which could have allowed threat actors to escalate their privileges over the network.

The online collaboration tool found its Windows application doesn’t always use explicit full paths when loading dynamic libraries (DLLs). Instead, it relies on Windows’ default search order, which means if an attacker were to place a malicious DLL into the right location, Zoom may load and execute it. It is similar to the Bring-Your-Own-Vulnerable-Driver type of attack, although not identical.

So, if the DLL triggers the installation of persistent malware such as backdoors or ransomware, and if Zoom runs with elevated privileges, the threat actors could, in theory, take over the entire endpoint.

Debian, Fedora, and others

In other scenarios, the vulnerability could be used to harvest sensitive files such as meeting recordings, contact lists, credentials, and similar. They could also pivot deeper into the corporate network, reaching domain controllers or high-value systems.

The worst part about abusing this flaw is that it does not require any authentication, and can be described as low in complexity. All the threat actors need is a path that the target device trusts, and doesn’t even require advanced skills - just placing the malicious DLL in a strategic location.

The vulnerability, affecting the Windows client, is tracked as CVE-2025-49457, and carries a severity score of 9.6/10 (critical).

Zoom’s prevalence in the business world, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic, means the attack surface is quite large.

Affected products include Zoom Workplace for Windows before version 6.3.10, Zoom Workplace VDI for Windows before version 6.3.10 (except 6.1.16 and 6.2.12), Zoom Rooms for Windows before version 6.3.10, Zoom Rooms Controller for Windows before version 6.3.10, and Zoom Meeting SDK for Windows before version 6.3.10.

A patch is already available, and users are advised to apply it as soon as possible.

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• Experts say Microsoft Teams and Zoom are perfect for hiding Ghost Calls
• Attackers can obtain temporary TURN credentials and create a tunnel
• Vendors must implement safeguards, because there are no vulnerabilities in sight

Researchers from Praetorian have shed the light on Ghost Calls, a post-exploitation command-and-control evasion technique which send attacker traffic through legitimate Traversal Using Relays around NAT (TURN) servers used by the likes of Zoom and Microsoft Teams, to evade detection.

The attack works by hijacking the temporary TURN credentials that conferencing calls receive when they join a meeting, and then establishing a tunnel between the compromised host and the attacker's machine.

Because all the traffic is routed through trusted Zoom/Teams IPs and domains, which are typically whitelisted inside enterprises, these types of hijacking attacks can fly under the radar.

Teams and Zoom susceptible to attacks

Praetorian explained that because the attack leverages infrastructure already allowed through corporate firewall,s proxies and TLS inspection, Ghost Calls can easily evade traditional defenses.

Blending traffic with normal, low-latency video meeting traffic patterns also helps the cybercriminals, who can eliminate the exposure of attacker-controlled domains and servers

Praetorian explains in the first of its two blog posts that video conferencing platforms "are designed to function even in environments with relatively strict egress controls," so if an attacker can crack into these systems, they could have a higher chance of data exfiltration.

"Additionally, this traffic is often end-to-end encrypted using AES or other strong encryption. This means the traffic is naturally heavily obfuscated and impossible to analyze in depth which makes it a perfect place to hide as an attacker," the researchers added.

TURN credentials typically expire after two to three days, so tunnels are short-lived, but alarmingly, Praetorian explains that there isn't necessarily a vulnerability for vendors to patch, adding that they must instead focus on introducing further safeguards to prevent against Ghost Call attacks.

Praetorian acknowledged that Zoom had pushed a mitigation for this particular technique "which only allows TURN infrastructure to pair a client with a media-server and disabled support for peer-to-peer connections through the infrastructure."

"This wouldn’t be possible in scenarios where providers leverage this infrastructure for peer-to-peer communication, but may be possible in certain instances where this infrastructure is only used for communication with a centralized server," the researchers added.

Praetorian noted that it had not tested if any workarounds would be possible in this scenario, yet.

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• Putin wants Western software "throttled" within Russia
• Microsoft and Zoom are still widely used by Russian businesses
• Domestic alternatives exist, but aren't being adopted as fast as Putin would like

US tech companies including Microsoft and Zoom should be “throttled” and “strangled” from operating in Russia, President Vladimir Putin has said.

The statements, reported by Reuters, were reportedly made in response to complaints from Russian business leaders that US companies who previously announced their exit from Russian markets in response to the invasion of Ukraine still continue to operate in the country.

Microsoft announced the suspension of new sales of its software in the Russian market in 2022, but many Russian companies still use Western products and software, likely due to the lack of domestic alternatives.

Putin wants domestic office software

Sanctions put in place by Western countries following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have led to widespread calls for locally sourced and domestically produced products, ranging from aircraft parts to office software.

Many companies that pulled out of Russia left their locations and assets in place, such as McDonalds which was replaced by a new company called “Vkusno i Tochka,” who quickly introduced analogues of classic menu items such as the ‘Big Hit’ (a non-copyright infringing alternative to the Big Mac).

Now it seems that Putin wants to further distance Russia from the West by pushing for Russian businesses to begin using or producing software that could replace solutions offered by Microsoft and Zoom.

Alternatives to Western software already exist, with Kaspersky Lab becoming a majority shareholder of the МойОфис (MyOffice) software to improve collaboration between the office suite and Kaspersky’s own KasperskyOS secure operating system.

Western products and software previously dominated Russian markets before the invasion of Ukraine, with Russia taking steps to move away from Western software in the decade before the ‘special military operation’. How well domestic alternatives will perform on Russia’s range of Linux-based operating systems remains to be seen.

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Well, there goes Skype. Bye-bye, you garbage piece of software. I'm surprised you managed to hang around for as long as you did, frankly.

Okay, I’m being a bit mean here; the impact of Skype on the global tech ecosystem shouldn’t be downplayed, as it effectively brought video communication to the mainstream - something that previously was the domain of corporate execs with money to burn on expensive early video-conferencing solutions. For a wonderful, all-too-brief period in the early 2010s, Skype was everywhere: a way to chat face-to-face with distant relatives or schoolmates who were just beyond the reach of an after-class bike ride.

But I can’t pretend Skype was all sunshine and rainbows, even before the pandemic lockdowns and the rise of its chief competitor, Zoom. I remember sitting for ages waiting for a call to connect, frequent audio dropouts, and sometimes struggling to log in at all. Sure, internet connections are faster and more consistent now than they were when Skype was first conceived back in 2003, but that’s not an all-encompassing excuse for the app’s many failings.

The Microsoft problem

See, Skype’s greatest victory was also a sword of Damocles hanging over its head: its 2011 purchase by Microsoft. A multi-billion dollar deal that positioned Skype to replace Windows Live Messenger (formerly known as the ever-iconic MSN), the purchase proved to be an immediate boon for Skype, as it was widely inserted into Windows devices over the following years, thus reaching a massive global audience.

Unfortunately, this deal also meant that Skype was owned by Microsoft, which is rarely a safe position to be in. Remember Zune? Yeah, me neither. The list of products and services killed off by Microsoft over the years is long and storied, and many - including myself - saw the writing on the wall long before serious external competition arrived on the scene.

A key issue was Microsoft’s long-running and ill-placed desire to make Teams work. I’ll be honest: as someone who was, in a previous and much worse place of employment, forced to use Microsoft Teams, I can say with conviction that it sucks. Rigid settings, feature bloat, and an inexplicable ravenous hunger for RAM make it a frequently painful piece of software to use, especially on an outdated work PC.

But Microsoft wanted - and still wants - it to be a Thing People Want To Use, which ultimately led to Skype taking a back seat as its features were gradually cannibalized to improve Teams. In fact, now that Skype has officially been taken out back with a shotgun, Microsoft is actively encouraging users to port their accounts over to Teams.

And what did Skype get in return? A drip-feed of features that nobody asked for, most of which did little to improve the core video-calling functionality. The interface became more cluttered, frequent UI redesigns left users confused, and yet there was a paradoxical feeling of stagnation; meanwhile, the meteoric rise of social-media-driven video calling across platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp offered a far more streamlined and pleasant user experience.

Impacts of the pandemic

Zoom has been around since 2011 (ironically, the same year Microsoft acquired Skype) but you’d be forgiven for thinking that it just popped into existence at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. When we were collectively displaced from our offices and had to construct impromptu workspaces inside our homes, video conferencing became an everyday necessity - and as we all know, this was where the cracks in Skype’s facade really started to show.

Technical debt is never an easy hurdle to overcome, and Skype’s aging software architecture - while cutting-edge back in 2003 - gradually became a weight chained around its ankle. With Teams at the forefront, investing in updating Skype never seemed like a priority for Microsoft. The app didn’t even change over to a centralized system from its outdated peer-to-peer networking until more than half a decade after Microsoft bought it.

One of the worst blunders was Microsoft’s insistence on keeping it partially anchored to actual phone numbers (with a dial pad feature, no less) in an era when interlinked accounts are king and phones are more than just phones. It was no doubt a move intended to retain the crop of older users who were unaware of the alternatives, but the 100-user call capacity and streamlined interface of Zoom made it an easy choice for professionals who needed to keep their careers afloat while the world screeched to a halt outside.

Long live Zoom

It’s certainly not a universal truth that Microsoft ruins everything it touches - the Surface tablet line is finally good now! - but the tech giant has something of a reputation for enshittification. I’ve been following the gradual decay of Windows for years now, and looking at how Microsoft treats its most widely known product makes understanding the fall of Skype very easy.

I’ve settled into a belief that Microsoft isn’t able to just let things be what they are. Everything had to be more! More features, more information, more settings, more AI! Forget what consumers actually want; the line must go up, the goalposts must keep moving, everything must be constantly changing and innovating or it’s worthless. Once you start to see Microsoft as a tech company incapable of sitting still, its successes and failures all start to make a lot more sense.

What people needed for the remote working shift during the pandemic was an effective, straightforward video conferencing tool. They didn’t find that in Skype, which had already become a bloated shell of its former self after years of ‘innovation’ at the hands of Microsoft. So I say this now, to the creators of Zoom: if it ain’t broke…

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• Cybercriminals are inviting victims to talk to "journalists"
• On the Zoom call, they're asked to grant permissions for remote access
• Those that grant the permissions lose their crypto

Hackers are abusing Zoom’s remote desktop feature to steal people’s cryptocurrency, experts have warned.

Cybersecurity researchers Trail of Bits claim to have seen the attack in the wild, focusing on “high-value targets,” people who the media would often contact for comments and discussion on everyday events. The attackers would reach out via social media (X, for example), and send them a Zoom invite via Calendly, pretending to be Bloomberg journalists.

On Zoom, the attackers would join with an account named “Zoom”, and request remote control over the victim’s account. The victims would see a popup saying “Zoom is requesting remote control of your screen” which, for those used to granting permissions without thinking twice, might seem like a legitimate request from a legitimate app.

Elusive Comet

"What makes this attack particularly dangerous is the permission dialog's similarity to other harmless Zoom notifications," Trail of Bits said.

"Users habituated to clicking "Approve" on Zoom prompts may grant complete control of their computer without realizing the implications."

Once the access is granted, the attackers would move fast, deploy a stealthy backdoor or other means of retaining access, and then disconnect from the call.

The last step is to use the malware to access the victim’s cryptocurrency wallets and siphon out any funds found inside.

The researchers named the group “Elusive Comet” and said the methodology is most likely copied from Lazarus, the infamous North Korean state-sponsored entity that targets crypto businesses.

"The ELUSIVE COMET methodology mirrors the techniques behind the recent $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February, where attackers manipulated legitimate workflows rather than exploiting code vulnerabilities," Trail of Bits said in its report.

To mitigate the risk, it would be best not to grant people or apps remote access, unless you’re 100% certain the person is benign.

Via BleepingComputer

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• Zoom went down for users for several hours
• The outage was caused by a GoDaddy domain “communication error”
• Spotify and X also had hiccups, but this was thought to be unrelated

The recent Zoom outage has been blamed on a GoDaddy domain issue, with the GoDaddy Registry mistakenly blocking the zoom.us domain due to a communication error between Zoom’s own domain registrar, Markmonitor, and GoDaddy Registry.

The result was reduced service between 2:55 PM ET and 4:12 PM ET, with Zoom Meetings, Zoom Phone, Zoom Contact Center and the Zoom Website all affected.

The video conferencing company was quick to add, “There was no product, security, network failure or Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.”

Zoom outage caused by GoDaddy error

Although Zoom confirmed a “communication error” between Markmonitor and GoDaddy Registry caused the outage, we don’t know any details about the events leading up to the miscommunication.

The two domain companies and Zoom worked together to identify and remove the block “quickly,” Zoom added.

Separate Downdetector monitoring noted that most complaints related to server connections, with one in five also experiencing login issues and a handful conference calls.

The outage came just a few hours after a widespread outage affecting Spotify’s app, website and music streaming services, and a couple of hours before a minor X outage affecting the website and app, however these issues are likely unrelated.

Even though services had been restored within less than two hours, some users were being advised to flush their DNS caches and to reconnect if they were still experiencing problems:

• For Windows open a command prompt and type "ipconfig /flushdns"
• For Mac open a terminal window and type "sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder"

Cisco’s ThousandEyes has also carried out a details analysis of the outage, noting the functionality of DNS and the incident’s impact.

“Identifying a specific fault domain when a service encounters issues requires visibility into performance across the entire service delivery chain,” Cisco said.

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Video conferencing (VC) continues to enjoy unprecedented growth levels since the pandemic, and Biamp now wants a piece of the action. It makes its play for the small to medium-sized meeting room market with the imposing Parlé VBC 2500.

Measuring nearly one metre in length, this all-in-one conferencing bar takes a lot of the technology Biamp has developed over its 46 years in the professional audio-visual (AV) space and hands it to SMBs. Whereas most competing VC bars offer a beam-forming array made up of five or six microphones, the VBC 2500 boasts a highly accurate beam-tracking array comprising 27 microphone elements.

It sports a 4K UHD camera capable of delivering up to a 2160p resolution at 30fps and teams this with a wide 120° field of view (FoV) plus digital pan, tilt, zoom (PTZ) functions with 5x zoom capabilities. The camera incorporates a mechanical shutter that automatically obscures the view when a meeting has finished or a user disables video from their UC app.

Sound output is a cut above the rest, too, as Biamp has designed the speaker array to accurately reproduce human speech. The array comprises a pair of 20W speakers in sealed enclosures plus passive radiators to improve bass, and it uses active distortion compensation to ensure a flat response.

Placement options are plentiful: the VBC 2500 has an integral hinged desk stand and the kit includes a metal wall-mount bracket. Behind the rear removable panel is an external power supply socket plus a USB-C host connection port – for BYOD operations you can connect the VBC 2500 to Biamp’s optional Devio SCR-10 desktop unit.

A standout feature is Biamp’s automated room configuration: simply plug the bar in, press the Launch button underneath and stand back. The bar measures the room’s acoustics by emitting a series of sounds that wouldn’t be out of place in a 1950s sci-fi movie.

It uses the audio feedback to optimize the mic array, speakers and integral digital sound processor (DSP) specifically to its environment. The upshot is that anyone can set up the VBC 2500, and the same process is used if it’s moved to another room.

Installation took seconds. We plugged the VBC 2500 into a USB port on a Windows 10 Pro host and all necessary drivers were automatically loaded. As to which VC software platform to use, the choice is yours – the VBC 2500 is UVC (USB video class) compliant and we had no problems using it with Skype, Microsoft Teams and Zoom.

Video settings can be tweaked to suit using Biamp’s free Camera Controller app. Auto-framing and backlight compensation can be disabled, PTZ functions manually operated, the image mirrored or flipped, UC profiles for Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and Zoom applied and three presets saved for further use.

Video quality at 1080p is impressive, and we found the image was sharp and clear with great contrast and color balance. Backlight compensation works well, as does auto-framing, with the camera snapping to the active speaker in a couple of seconds and tracking them if they moved around the meeting room.

Audio quality is even better – this is easily the best-sounding VC bar we’ve yet tested. Biamp’s speaker technology delivers a superb sound, with a warm, deep bass, natural-sounding voices and none of the shrillness you’ll find with smaller VC bars.

It’s loud, too, as we had to drop volume levels to 40% for our 24 square meter meeting room. Crank it up to maximum and it’ll go with you as the sound doesn’t break up at all.

The Parlé VBC 2500 isn’t as versatile as Logitech’s Rally Bar, which offers BYOD and standalone modes courtesy of its Android OS, but Biamp can’t be beaten for presentation quality. Video and audio are exceptionally good, digital auto-framing is fast and the smart launch mode makes meeting room setup a piece of cake.

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As if a Spotify outage wasn’t enough for one day, Zoom – the popular video conferencing service – also experienced a pretty large, global outage.

From about 3:00 PM ET on, Zoom’s own status showed ‘partial outages’ listed for ‘Zoom Meetings,’ which are, of course, the video calls you’d make on the platform.

Down Detector also showed a large number of reports. It peaked at over 55,000 at 3:15PM ET and has since lowered as Zoom has resolved the outage as of 4PM ET.

I tried to fire up a Zoom meeting during the outage but had no luck. In posts on X (formerly Twitter) and on Threads, other folks who rely on the platform are encountering other issues. Since then, I've been able to make a call, which you can see below.

While reports on Down Detector are starting to slow down a bit, there are still over 50,000 reports of Zoom not working on the platform, and the status page is still showing at least 'partial outages' for a few core services.

With the Zoom app on macOS, I am able to open it, but I can't sign in to the platform.

Similarly, my colleague Lance Ulanoff – TechRadar's Editor-at-Large – is stuck in a similar loop of being able to enter an email and password but then not receiving a verification code to actually log in to the service.

While a Zoom outage does spell trouble for connecting with colleagues or taking meetings, folks who have encountered issues with the platform are at least having some fun with GIFs on social media.

Zoom is investigating the outage hitting its platform

Some good news on the path to resolving this outage is that Zoom has acknowledged the issues it is facing right now.

At 3:17 PM ET, Zoom said it was starting to investigate some issues across its services, and at 3:51 PM ET, the service posted:

"We continue to investigate the domain name resolution issues on the zoom.us domain that is affecting multiple services. More updates to follow."

Seemingly, Zoom is still trying to determine what caused the issue. Once it is identified, hopefully, this will move into the resolution phase and ultimately bring the video calling service back online.

It's also worth noting this outage is not just limited to one specific region or country, like the United States or the United Kingdom, but this is a global outage according to Zoom's service status page.

People at least seem to be having some fun commenting on the outage. Many are also commenting on switching back to in-person meetings, or that it's essentially time for folks working remotely to take a break.

Post by @mallorymhughes

View on Threads

Post by @communitycoffee

View on Threads

Post by @hwy2bell

View on Threads

Post by @its.bk.k

View on Threads

Along with not being able to start or join Zoom meetings, the platform's status page appears to be down as well ... at least for some.

The most recent update from Zoom came at 4:16 PM ET and reads:

"Identified - We continue to investigate the domain name resolution issues on the zoom.us domain that is affecting multiple services. More updates to follow."

While Zoom's status page still shows partial outages for a number of the platform's features, I was just able to take a quick Zoom call with video with my colleague Lance Ulanoff.

Further, we could see and hear each other as normal. So this likely means the platform is starting to recover, and reports on Down Detector are beginning to drop now sitting at 9,345 as of 4:27 PM ET.

Zoom says the problems are fixed

Just after we made a successful call on the platform, and as reported outages on Down Detector are dropping, Zoom has updated its status page at 4:55 PM ET to read:

"Services have been restored, if you are still having connection issues please flush your DNS cache and attempt to reconnect."

That's great news after a close-to-two-hour outage. Zoom says it's still "Monitoring" the issues and is sharing instructions for flushing DNS cache on Mac and Windows computers.

For Windows open a command prompt and type "ipconfig /flushdns"

For Mac open a terminal window and type "sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder"

Zoom has posted to X (formerly Twitter), relaying that the platform's services have been restored. However, we still don't have details on what caused the platform and its many features to go down.

It also happened several hours after Spotify's global outage, but there are no signs that these are related to one another as of yet. It's just frustration for users when things go down.

Zoom sheds light on what caused today's outage

Zoom is now sharing a bit more on what caused the popular video calling platform's outage earlier today. You can read the entire statement below, posted on Zoom's status page under the past incidents heading, but it all revolves around a server block from GoDaddy Registrar.

Evidently, there was a communication error between the domain registrar, Markmonitor, and the GoDaddy Registrar, which caused issues on the "zoom.us" site and prevented many of Zoom's core features from functioning.

The three worked together to fix the issue, and Zoom says that "there was no product, security, or network failure" during today's outage.

"Resolved - On April 16, between 2:25 P.M. ET and 4:12 P.M. ET, the domain zoom.us was not available due to a server block by GoDaddy Registry. This block was the result of a communication error between Zoom’s domain registrar, Markmonitor, and GoDaddy Registry, which resulted in GoDaddy Registry mistakenly shutting down zoom.us domain.

Zoom, Markmonitor and GoDaddy worked quickly to identify and remove the block, which restored service to the domain zoom.us. There was no product, security or network failure at Zoom during the outage. GoDaddy and Markmonitor are working together to prevent this from happening again.

Apr 16, 17:31 PDT"

For more analysis, our sister site TechRadar Pro has delved deeper into the cause of the outage, which we now know to have been caused by the GoDaddy Registry mistakenly blocking the zoom.us domain due to a communication error between Zoom’s own domain registrar, Markmonitor, and GoDaddy Registry.

In today’s modern workplace, video conferencing platforms have become essential for effective communication.

Zoom quickly emerged as a leader in video meetings during the pandemic.

At the same time, Microsoft Teams positioned itself as a comprehensive collaboration hub, especially for organizations that rely on the Microsoft ecosystem.

As Teams continues to expand its features and integrate more deeply with Microsoft 365, many businesses are reassessing their software needs. This prompts an important question: given the robust capabilities of Microsoft Teams - often included in existing subscriptions - do businesses still need a separate subscription for Zoom?

This article examines both platforms' strengths, weaknesses, and specific use cases to determine whether Zoom remains essential or if Microsoft Teams is sufficient for today’s business communication needs.

Who's leading?

The video conferencing market remains highly competitive, with both platforms commanding significant market share.

According to recent data, Zoom holds approximately 55.91% of the videoconferencing software market, while Microsoft Teams takes second place with 32.29% market share in 2025.

This substantial presence for both platforms reflects their continued relevance in the business communication landscape.

Microsoft Teams has continued its growth trajectory, reaching approximately 280 million daily active users, while Zoom maintains about 300 million daily active users.

Both platforms have maintained strong user bases, indicating that businesses find value in their respective offerings.

Key Microsoft Teams strengths

Microsoft Teams provides numerous benefits for companies of all sizes, both large and small.

Deep Microsoft 365 integration

One of Microsoft Teams' most significant advantages is its seamless integration with the broader Microsoft 365 ecosystem. For organizations already using Microsoft's productivity suite, Teams is a natural extension connecting various business processes.

The platform enables real-time collaboration on Microsoft documents, integrates with SharePoint for file management, and connects with Outlook for scheduling.

This integration creates a unified workspace where employees can access all their productivity tools without switching between applications.

Comprehensive collaboration features

Teams offer more than just video conferencing; it provides a complete collaboration environment.

With features such as persistent chat, channels for organizing discussions, wiki functionality, and integrated task management, Teams positions itself as a centralized hub for teamwork.

The platform's structure, centered around "teams" and "channels," allows organizations to create dedicated spaces for different departments, projects, or topics, helping to keep communications organized and easily searchable.

Security and Compliance

Microsoft has built Teams on the foundation of its enterprise-grade security framework, which is particularly appealing to organizations with strict compliance requirements.

The platform includes advanced security features such as two-factor authentication, data encryption, and compliance with FERPA, SOC, GDPR, HIPAA, and FedRAMP standards.

Key Zoom strengths

Zoom provides various tools that can benefit businesses of all sizes.

User-Friendly interface

Zoom is well-known for its simplicity and ease of use. The platform's intuitive interface allows new users to join meetings with minimal effort, which is especially valuable when connecting with external stakeholders who may not be familiar with more complex collaboration tools.

Video quality and reliability

Zoom has built its reputation on delivering high-quality video and reliable connections. Although Microsoft Teams has significantly improved its video quality, many users still perceive Zoom as having superior performance for significant video calls, particularly in environments with variable bandwidth.

Extensive integration capabilities

Zoom offers over 1,000 integrations through its marketplace, compared to Teams' approximately 250 integrations. This extensive integration ecosystem enables businesses to connect Zoom with various third-party applications, including popular tools like HubSpot, Zendesk, Slack, Google Workspace, and Dropbox.

A case for using both options

For many businesses, the solution isn't to choose one platform over the other; instead, it's beneficial to use both.

Different use cases

Many organizations have found value in maintaining both platforms for distinct purposes. Microsoft Teams often serves as the internal collaboration hub, while Zoom is utilized for external communication with clients, partners, or more extensive webinars.

This dual approach leverages Teams' strengths in internal collaboration and document management while taking advantage of Zoom's simplicity and reliability for external-facing communications, where ease of access is crucial.

Meeting different user preferences

Workforce diversity means different teams or departments may have varying preferences and needs. Some teams may integrate deeply with Microsoft's ecosystem, while others prefer Zoom's interface or specific features.

Technical redundancy

Maintaining two separate communication platforms provides redundancy in case of service outages. If one platform experiences technical difficulties, organizations can quickly switch to the alternative, ensuring business continuity.

Cost considerations

The financial implications of maintaining dual platforms must be carefully evaluated. Microsoft Teams is included in many Microsoft 365 subscriptions, with business plans starting at around $6 per user per month. For organizations already using Microsoft 365, Teams essentially comes at no additional cost.

Zoom's pricing starts at approximately $14.99 per month per license for its Pro plan, with higher tiers offering additional features. This represents a significant extra expense, especially for larger organizations.

However, if Zoom fulfills specific business needs that Teams cannot effectively address, the additional investment may be justified by improved productivity and communication outcomes.

Logitech’s traditional Rally Bar video conferencing (VC) room solutions offer an incredible range of features, but small businesses may be put off by their size. Enter the Rally Bar Huddle, which steps in below the Mini model, and is designed for meeting rooms of up to six participants.

Width-wise, the Huddle is 170mm shorter than the Mini and weighs less than half as much. Its 4K UHD camera dispenses with the motorized pan, tilt and zoom (PTZ) functions used by its bigger brothers and goes fully digital.

There’s room for Logitech’s standard six-microphone beamforming array for auto-framing of active participants, while audio output is handled by a single downward-firing ported speaker. The graphite fabric magnetic front cover can be swapped out for an off-white fabric version for £109 or a white plastic cleanable cover, which costs £129.

As with Logitech’s other Rally Bars, the Huddle supports three operational modes, and you can connect it to a dedicated room computer or let users bring their own device (BYOD) and load the VC app of their choice. In appliance mode, Logitech’s on-board Android-based CollabOS turns the Huddle into a standalone system, with it currently supporting Microsoft Teams Rooms and Zoom Rooms.

Deployment is smooth. After connecting the Huddle’s gigabit network port (Wi-Fi 5 is also available) we used its web interface to choose BYOD, Teams or Zoom mode. We could access all audio and video settings, run firmware upgrades and enable Logitech’s RightSight 2 video enhancement technology, although only the Group view was available, with the Speaker and Grid views yet to be implemented.

Load Logitech’s Sync app on the host PC and you can add the Huddle to a Sync cloud account for remote management of all your Logitech room devices and room usage analytics. The Huddle also supports Logitech’s optional Tap IP and Scheduler touchscreen tablets.

BYOD mode is easy to use: we connected a Windows 10 host PC to the camera’s HDMI-in port and an HD monitor to its HDMI-out port and used our local Teams, Skype and Zoom VC apps. Configuring the Huddle in appliance mode is equally swift. We chose Teams from the web console and, after a reboot, used the unique code it presented to assign it to our Microsoft 365 account. The Huddle duly appeared in our Teams admin console as a new Teams Rooms on Android device, while our attached Full HD monitor presented the familiar Microsoft Teams interface.

Connect a PC over USB and the Huddle will swap to BYOD mode and back to Teams when you remove the cable, although we noted that in Teams mode the web console was disabled and returning the Huddle to BYOD-only mode requires it to be reset to defaults.

The camera delivers a sharply focused image with good color balance, and its backlight compensation works very well.

Sound quality from the single speaker is easily good enough for small meeting rooms, and we liked the Huddle’s motorized privacy shutter, which automatically closes when a meeting has finished.

The Huddle’s digital PTZ speaker tracking is much faster than Logitech’s other Rally Bars, which can often take up to eight seconds to respond to movement. During a Teams meeting, we wandered around our room as we spoke and the camera smoothly tracked us with delays of no more than three seconds.

Some features are yet to be added, but Logitech’s Rally Bar Huddle is a good choice for small businesses with equally small meeting rooms. Speaker tracking is the fastest of all the available Rally Bars, audio and video quality are good, and Logitech’s integral CollabOS adds extra versatility.

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• Zoom’s AI agents are coming to Meetings, Team Chat, Docs and more
• More than 45 “innovations” have been made to boost productivity
• New features will be rolling out over the coming weeks

Zoom has announced the next step in its agentic AI strategy with a range of new skills, agents and models coming to Zoom Workplace and Zoom Business Services.

The company said the new releases will help its users get on with being more productive and strengthening their relationships with customers with the help of more autonomous AI tools.

With the bold claim that over 45 new innovations have made it to Zoom’s portfolio, its agentic AI will cover apps like Zoom Meetings, Zoom Phone, Zoom Team Chat, Zoom Docs and Zoom Contact Center.

Zoom AI Companion gets an agentic boost

The platform’s AI Companion, which gets a 2.0 version launch, will continue to serve as the vehicle for Zoom to implement agentic AI across its portfolio, just with helpful enhancements like reasoning and memory for decision-making, problem solving and learning.

Zoom CPO Smita Hashim summarized: “AI Companion is evolving from a personal assistant to being truly agentic.”

Besides the usual task action and orchestration functionalities of agentic AI, Zoom will also help workers manage their calendars and generate content.

Later this spring, users will also be able to create and deploy customizable virtual agents for more contextual customer conversations, but they’ll also be able to take action. Third-party agents such as the ServiceNow Now Assist agent and custom agents are also set to be supported “soon.”

Agentic AI promises major boosts for things like detecting action items in meeting summaries with Zoom Tasks and extracting tasks from calls using the Zoom for Microsoft Teams app. Coming later in May, we’re also promised agentic AI for creating meeting agendas and also real-time summarization of meetings and phone calls.

It’s not just worker productivity that’s set for improvements, though, because AI Companion for Workspace Reservation will recommend which days employees should go to the office based on scheduled meetings and teammates’ scheduled in-office days, with the agentic portion of Zoom’s AI proactively booking desks or Zoom Rooms.

“We’re delivering value for our customers through AI agents and agentic skills that solve real customer problems, helping them connect, collaborate, and get more done, all within the Zoom platform our users trust and love,” Hashim added.

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In today’s ever-changing business environment, video conferencing has become an essential tool for communication and collaboration.

Two prominent platforms, Zoom and Google Meet, offer unique features to meet professional needs, and this article thoroughly compares these platforms, examining their functionalities, user experience, security measures, and integration capabilities.

By analyzing the strengths and weaknesses, we aim to equip business users with the insights they need to make informed decisions. This ensures their chosen platform aligns with their specific communication requirements and promotes effective virtual interactions.

Zoom vs Google Meet: features

When Zoom and Google Meet are compared, several key differences in features become evident. Google Meet is deeply integrated within the Google Workspace ecosystem, emphasizing seamlessness, especially for users already utilizing Google's suite of applications. Its strength lies in ease of access, often requiring no downloads, and its tight integration with Google Calendar.

On the other hand, Zoom stands out with a more extensive array of advanced features, particularly suitable for larger and more complex meetings. This includes robust host controls, detailed customization options for video and audio, and a wider range of third-party integrations. Zoom offers more in-depth features like virtual backgrounds and video touch-ups.

While both platforms provide essential tools such as screen sharing, chat, and breakout rooms, Zoom typically offers a greater level of control and customization within those features. Additionally, Zoom has expanded its offerings beyond video conferencing with features that compete with various aspects of Google Workspace.

Finally, both platforms now include AI assistance but differ in implementation and cost. Zoom's AI companion is integrated into its paid plans, while Google's AI assistance is a separate paid feature.

Zoom vs Google Meet: integrations

The integration capabilities of Zoom and Google Meet highlight their distinct core philosophies. Google Meet, as part of the Google Workspace suite, offers seamless integration with other Google services such as Calendar, Drive, Docs, and Gmail. This allows users to easily schedule meetings, share files, and access meeting recordings within their familiar Google environment.

In contrast, while Zoom does provide some integrations with Google Workspace, it excels in offering a broader range of third-party integrations. Zoom connects with numerous CRM systems, marketing automation tools, project management software, and collaboration platforms, catering to a wide variety of business workflows. This extensive integration network makes Zoom a more versatile option for businesses that use diverse applications. For instance, Zoom integrates with platforms like Salesforce, Slack, and Microsoft Teams, providing a central hub for communication and collaboration across different software environments.

While Google Meet emphasizes a unified experience within its own ecosystem, Zoom aims to provide a flexible platform that can adapt to various existing business infrastructures through its wider array of integrations.

Zoom vs Google Meet: support

Zoom and Google Meet offer different approaches to customer support, tailored to their target audiences and the complexities of their platforms. Google Meet, as part of the larger Google Workspace ecosystem, primarily depends on online help documentation, community forums, and integrated support within the Workspace platform. For paying Google Workspace customers, direct support is available through email, chat, or phone, with varying levels of priority based on the subscription tier.

In contrast, Zoom caters to a broader range of users, including individuals and large enterprises, and provides a more diverse support system. They offer extensive online resources, such as knowledge bases, video tutorials, and live webinars. Zoom also has tiered support plans that include phone support, dedicated customer success managers, and priority issue resolution for higher-tier business and enterprise customers. This tiered approach enables Zoom to meet the needs of its diverse user base by providing more personalized and responsive support to businesses with critical communication requirements.

While both platforms provide satisfactory support, Zoom's structured tiered system often offers more direct and immediate assistance for paying business users.

Zoom vs Google Meet: pricing

The pricing structures of Zoom and Google Meet differ significantly, reflecting their target markets and feature sets. Google Meet is integrated within Google Workspace, meaning its pricing is tied to Workspace subscriptions. This integration offers various tiers, ranging from basic plans with limited features to enterprise-level plans with advanced capabilities. The cost scales based on the number of users and desired features, making it a potentially cost-effective option for businesses already invested in the Google ecosystem.

In contrast, Zoom uses a tiered pricing model specifically for its video conferencing platform. It offers free plans with limitations, as well as paid plans that provide increasing features, participant capacity, and administrative controls. Zoom’s pricing is often seen as more flexible, allowing businesses to select a plan that closely matches their specific needs. However, for businesses requiring advanced features or larger meeting capacities, Zoom's costs can add up quickly.

In summary, Google Meet is bundled with a suite of tools, while Zoom is a standalone service with tiered pricing based on features and user capacity.

Zoom vs Google Meet: verdict 

The ideal candidate for Zoom, compared to Google Meet, is usually a business or individual who needs a high level of control and customization in their video conferencing experience or someone who hosts extensive meetings or webinars. Specifically, companies that frequently conduct large-scale webinars, online training sessions, or virtual events will find Zoom’s robust host controls, breakout room functionalities, and participant management tools invaluable.

Companies with diverse technology stacks requiring extensive third-party integrations, such as customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation platforms, will benefit from Zoom’s broader integration capabilities. Additionally, organizations prioritizing advanced features like detailed video and audio customization, virtual backgrounds, and comprehensive analytics often find Zoom’s platform more suitable.

Finally, businesses needing dedicated, tiered customer support—including phone support and dedicated account managers—will likely prefer Zoom’s enterprise offerings. In summary, if your organization values a feature-rich, highly customizable video conferencing platform with extensive integrations and firm support, Zoom is likely the better choice.

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For businesses, data is their one constant. In the age of AI, data itself has not changed, but how it is delivered, and what companies can do with it has. Think of the arrival of Netflix and its effect on Blockbuster. The core product remained the same, but the way it was delivered and consumed was completely new, and that meant Blockbuster ceased to exist.

Data is becoming a key tool for businesses hoping to weather today’s tough economic climate and overcome common industry challenges, from inflation to supply chain issues. Those who have not yet got to grips with their data are more at risk from economic difficulties, as data, underpinned by a robust data strategy and paired with artificial intelligence (AI), can deliver the insight and foresight needed to remain competitive and manage market fluctuations. Companies that fail to engage with their data or those that implement AI ineffectively may face the same fate as Blockbuster.

Building the foundations

Data is as valuable to a company as any other asset on a balance sheet. Organizations cannot be valued by revenue alone, but also by the data they own and the impact it has on the business. All companies have data at their fingertips, but to turn that into business value, it has to be correlated, analyzed and used correctly. Organizations can’t make the most of their data if it is sitting in siloes.

Businesses must have a strong data foundation in place: this is the jumping-off point for data exploration and analysis. Once organizations have onboarded onto a modern data platform to serve as this foundation, it’s time for leaders to think carefully about what sort of AI they want to use. As a first step, they should consider enterprise AI tools, which can be applied to organizations to enhance various business functions. To enable this, businesses need to build a consolidated and open data strategy to run these AI models.

Generative AI (genAI) excels at creating new content based on inputs, often fueled by huge data models. While it has many uses, the vastness of the data required can result in issues within an organization's data foundation if they are unable to ingest and analyze such quantities of data. While there is mass excitement around genAI, companies should avoid rushing into implementation, as the models will not be properly trained on all the data available. This can result in inaccuracies and hallucinations, turning AI investments sour and leading business leaders to cut back on spend.

Enterprise AI should instead be the first port of call for businesses, as it is based on smaller data sets, for a certain purpose or benefit as opposed to having potentially infinite uses. For example, since building an enterprise data foundation, Zoom has built enterprise-grade AI applications for everyone within the company, enabling smarter business decisions as teams have access to the right data at the right time.

Now, anyone within the business can chat with their data in natural language to glean key business insights and increase productivity. Enterprise AI is also more energy efficient, using AI for purpose and leveraging the technology where it makes the most sense. While GenAI will see more mainstream use, the two are not mutually exclusive and businesses will likely need to consider both on their AI journey.

The right culture

Technology, by its very nature, is disruptive and aims to drive automation within an organization. This can have a big impact on people, but business leaders need to minimize any uncertainty around AI as much as possible and work to dispel the natural fear that the technology might herald an era of job losses. The latest research from PwC shows that the opposite will happen: AI will bring an era of gradual job growth, helping to ensure there are enough workers so that organizations can find the people they need. What will change are the skills required by workers.

Traditional skills are already disappearing from job adverts, and new skills are appearing, with this change happening 25% faster in roles where AI automation is having an impact. Businesses need to consider the right people for the job and hire them into roles where they can develop their existing skills while giving them learning opportunities to gain new skills.

Culture is hugely important when it comes to implementing technologies such as AI. Business leaders need to first ensure they have access to education and resources so they can get to grips with the technology themselves. Then and only then should they aim to educate their workforce on the benefits of the technology and the skills they will need to engage with it.

This will help establish an open dialogue for employees and leaders to discuss AI use within a company and its purpose, resulting in an increased appetite for engaging with the technology. Businesses can then assess the right tools, policies and data processes and how they will use AI.

Data and survival

Today, the goal for many businesses is to implement AI and reap its rewards. While AI is the current destination, it’ll become a stepping stone to the next destination that all companies are vying to reach. This is a cycle all industries go through, some organizations survive, and some don’t. To be one of the companies that thrive in the age of AI, leaders need to steer their organizations in the right direction, and ensure there is a strong foundation in place to support a consolidated data strategy, enabling them to differentiate themselves from the competition and deliver for customers.

Doing so requires careful planning, and a shift away from siloed approaches, as well as a step change in company culture. By building this foundation, and avoiding the pitfalls of adopting AI too rapidly, business leaders can build companies fit to grow into an AI-powered future.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

• Zoom's new Workflow Automation looks to save you time on repetitive tasks
• It won’t cost you any more, and is available now
• Zoom AI now alsosupports even more languages

Zoom has lifted the wraps off a new AI-powered tool designed to assist workers with repetitive and administrative work, freeing them up more time to produce meaningful outcomes.

The new Workflow Automation service centers around no-code automation templates that users can select and tweak to get certain tasks done for them, promising support for third-party apps as well as the company’s own software.

Head of Team Chat, Wei Li, described the feature as easy to use for workers who aren’t technically minded, adding: “Empowering people with AI to help them get more done is core to what we do at Zoom.”

Zoom on AI-powered productivity software

In its announcement, Zoom described how Workflow Automation could be used to generate summaries after meetings, and have that summary added directly into a Zoom Doc, Google Doc or Word document, before automatically sharing that document in a Team Chat channel, all without the involvement or direction of a worker (beyond the initial setup).

Zoom slated its competitors for requiring workers to possess a certain amount of technical knowledge, adding that its no-code technology can be used by virtually anyone for pretty significant productivity boosts.

At the same time, the California-based company previously known for its video conferencing software – which now wants to be known for its AI-enhance Workplace software – added new features to its AI Companion tool.

With hybrid working still commonplace in many industries, companion audi in Zoom Rooms promises to enhance the experience by using workers’ individual laptops as additional microphones for clearer audio, rather than requiring companies to invest in multiple in-room mics.

Zoom is also adding a YouTube app within Zoom Meetings “soon,” promising native and lag-free video sharing for each individual participant rather than a cumbersome screen sharing experience.

Furthermore, support for Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Indonesian, Polish, Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese and Dutch (Netherlands) have all been added to extend the company’s reach into many of the world’s most populous countries.

Paying Zoom subscribers can now access Workflow Automation at no additional cost with versions 6.3.10 and above of the desktop app.

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• Zoom Team Chat is now smarter with AI Companion integration
• The AI upgrades are free of charge for paying customers
• Zoom Chat also has improvements for developers

In its effort to become the go-to “AI-first work platform for human connection” – a term coined by the company in its Zoom 2.0 rebranding in November 2024 – Zoom has introduced a series of new AI tools to its Team Chats.

The redesigned Team Chat sidebar includes new organization functions like drag-and-drop tab arrangement, advanced sorting and filtering.

Key to the updated Team Chat sidebar are the new AI Companion enhancements, which include conversation summarization in select chats and channels, action item identification and information retrieval through an improve search feature.

Zoom overhauls its Team Chat sidebar with AI

“With Zoom Team Chat, you can do cross-product work and be more productive with Zoom Workplace’s AI-first products like Zoom Docs, Zoom Meetings, and Zoom Whiteboard," Zoom CPO Smita Hashim commented.

In a bid to cater to its developer users, Zoom has also added code block and in-line code support to help users format and share code from within the application.

“Our new Team Chat sidebar design takes this to the next level by empowering users to collaborate smarter and customize their workspace to fit their preferred workflow," added Hashim.

"With AI Companion… users can triage and track their messages more easily, saving time and allowing them to focus on what matters most.”

The redesigned sidebar and AI Companion are available to paying Zoom Workplace subscribers for no additional charge.

The new changes are part of CEO Eric Yuan’s plan to make Zoom 2.0 a “fully customizable digital twin” that can save employees an entire working day each week in unproductive time.

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• Zoom reveals rebrand, says it has achieved what it wanted in terms of its video conferencing platform
• The company is now going all-in on its Workplace office software
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Zoom has rebranded itself in a major shift away from the video conferencing solution that we’ve all come to know and "love" – and the company now wants you to know it as an “AI-first work platform for human connection.”

In a blog post entitled “Allow us to reintroduce ourselves,” CEO Eric Yuan recalls the founding of the company in 2011, when its goal was to become the “best video conferencing solution on the market,” a target it certainly delivered on during the pandemic when the rise of video calling allowed it to become synonymous with both personal and workplace communications.

The so-called “Zoom 2.0” now wants to be so much more than just a video conferencing solution, but don’t worry, video calls aren’t going anywhere just yet.

Zoom 2.0

Speaking about advances in artificial intelligence, Yuan now describes Zoom as an “AI-first company,” and key to this is AI Companion which is integrated throughout the Zoom Workplace portfolio.

In a bold statement, Yuan proposed: “Over time, we believe these capabilities will translate into a fully customizable digital twin equipped with your institutional knowledge, freeing up a whole day’s worth of work and allowing you to work just four days per week.”

Previously a 48-hour affair, the CEO recalls Henry Ford’s work in automation to bring the typical working week down to 40 hours. He now wants to bring back another eight hours to everyone’s lives.

“Zoom is now about so much more than video meetings,” said Yuan, who has removed the ‘Video’ from the company’s formal name – ‘Zoom Video Communications, Inc.’ The company hasn't shared details of where it's heading in terms of new product launches, but the newly added Zoom Docs and the upgraded Zoom AI Companion 2.0 suggest it could be looking on to take more established giants like Microsoft and Google.

The firm also announced that third-quarter revenue stood at $1.177 billion, marking a 3.6% year-over-year growth. Fourth-quarter figures aren’t predicted to be so healthy, with anticipated revenue of between $1.175 billion and $1.180 billion.

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A recent report by software testing provider TestDevLab has claimed Zoom is leading the way when it comes to AI, good news for a company that has invested so heavily in AI recently.

The study found video conferencing software from Zoom outperforms key rivals, such as Microsoft Teams and Cisco Webex, in areas like transcription accuracy, meeting summaries and conversational AI.

The news comes less than a month after Zoom announced version 2.0 of its AI Companion, which includes new capabilities like expanded context, information synthesis and the ability to take action.

Zoom claims to be better at AI than Teams, Webex

The report claimed Zoom achieved the lowest Word Error Rate (WER) in meeting transcriptions, scoring 7.40% compared with 10.16% for Webex and 11.54% for Teams, which means it has greater accuracy when it comes to keeping records.

Similarly, but with less of a distinction, Zoom outperformed Teams and Webex in terms of transcription evaluation and meeting summarization.

Speaking about the AI-generated summaries, the researchers said: “Strengths include objectivity and a clear listing of action items, while minor improvements could be made in providing a bit more context for certain terms and ensuring full completeness by covering some minor sub-discussions.”

The company also excelled in conversational AI, delivering responses in 4716.1 milliseconds on average – nearly twice as fast as Microsoft Teams (9269.9 milliseconds).

TestDevLab also analyzed prompt response stability, defined as the ability of all participants to receive a similar answer, and found that Zoom (96%) outperformed Teams (89%) and Webex (84%) by a healthy margin.

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• Oracle Red Bull Racing announces Neat as official video conferencing partner
• Partnership starts from 2025 Formula 1 season
• Neat will provide video conferencing kit to the team

One of Formula 1's most dominant teams in recent years has announced a new tech partnership showing the importance of video conferencing in the sport.

Reigning Formula 1 world team and driver's champions (at the time of going to press) Oracle Red Bull Racing, has announced it will be teaming up with Neat for the start of the 2025 Formula 1 World Championship.

The three-year deal will see Neat devices used throughout Oracle Red Bull Racing's entire organization, including its headquarters just outside Milton Keynes, UK, as well as branding on the team's car and uniforms.

Neat partnership for Oracle Red Bull Racing

The partnership sees Neat named as the team’s exclusive Video Conferencing Hardware Partner and an Innovation Partner, possibly replacing an existing relationship Oracle Red Bull Racing had with Zoom.

“With our shared commitment to innovation and excellence, we are excited to welcome Neat to the Oracle Red Bull Racing Team and look forward to working together to support simple and immersive collaboration experiences for our organization," said Christian Horner, Team Principal and CEO, Oracle Red Bull Racing.

"Close teamwork, passion, and creativity are key to the Team’s success on the track, and Neat’s video technology allows us to collaborate at our best."

The 2025 Formula 1 season will feature 24 races across the globe, with the team travelling to new venues every few weeks, meaning video conferencing and online collaboration tools have never been more important, especially in a sport where gaining even the slightest advantage on your competitors can mean the difference between winning and second place.

Neat offers a range of video conferencing display and camera hardware, alongside its Pulse full-service offering, which gives companies full oversight and control of device deployment across their organization.

“Oracle Red Bull Racing is known around the world as a team that has achieved the highest levels of success in Formula 1 racing, and we are pleased to join them as a partner," said Janine Pelosi, CEO of Neat.

"Neat’s passion for delivering simple yet powerful collaboration experiences aligns perfectly with the Oracle Red Bull Racing team’s dedication to bringing a complex organization together to achieve success. This partnership brings the Neat brand to a large global audience while staying true to our core ethos of bringing people together with our elegant and powerful video devices."

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Don't worry if you notice your doctor doesn't seem to be writing down anything you tell them during a Zoom video call anymore. Thanks to a new deal between Zoom and medical AI assistant creator Suki, there's an AI assistant on top of things.

The two companies have agreed to embed Suki's AI notetaker and administrative assistant into Zoom's telehealth service. That means your doctor can focus on what you're telling them without needing to split their attention by writing notes and possibly missing something you've said.

The Suki Platform already handles similar duties for almost a million healthcare clinicians in the U.S. but usually deploys for in-person appointments. The AI (with your permission) records your conversation with the doctor and then mines the transcript for important details and follow-up visit plans. After doctor approval and annotation, the notes are added to your electronic health record. Suki's research shows that this kind of AI-based clinical notetaking can cut down the time doctors spend on paperwork by up to 70%, giving them more time and energy for actual care.

Zoom will augment its platform with Suki for appointments to do the same for telehealth visits. The only difference is that the AI will listen in during your Zoom call instead of from a recorder in the room with you and the doctor. That could be a big deal considering Zoom's explosive growth in the healthcare industry during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.

“With over almost 140,000 healthcare institutions globally using the Zoom platform, we feel a great responsibility to leverage the power of AI to drive employee productivity and enhance patient experiences,” Zoom chief product officer Smita Hashim said. “Working together with Suki to provide critical AI-generated clinical note functionality to Zoom Workplace for Clinicians will reduce documentation overhead for clinicians, allowing them to focus on patients.”

AI Admin

Zoom's interest in clinical AI assistance is not unique, of course. For instance, Microsoft recently debuted a new set of AI tools to handle administrative tasks for healthcare providers using the technology gained when it acquired Nuance. There's also Amazon, which has brought its Bedrock AI-fueled tools like AWS HealthScribe to subsidiary One Medical. There are also plenty of smaller companies jockeying with Suki to provide clinical AI assistants, including Abridge and Notable.

That's mostly in the background, though. Just know that when your doctor makes a lot of eye contact with you on your Zoom call, it doesn't mean they have Netflix open in another window and they're ignoring you. It actually means they're paying more attention than they could before and will have help reminding them what you said if needed.

“AI is changing the way we interact with the world. Everything from how we communicate to how we use technology to how care is delivered will evolve. Video will be a critical interface in the AI-driven world,” Suki CEO Punit Soni said. “We are thrilled to work with Zoom to develop new interaction models and AI that will advance our mission of making healthcare technology invisible and assistive so clinicians can focus on what’s most important: their patients.”

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Dell has recently updated many of its Latitude business laptops with Intel’s Core Ultra chips, and this is our first chance to look at one in the flesh. If you haven’t checked out Latitudes for a while you might be struck by the dark grey matte chassis, a striking design that’s a welcome move away from the light grey metal finish so common on business laptops.

Duck if one is thrown at you, however, as it’s one dense, heavy machine. That’s partly due to the robustness of the aluminum chassis, but also because convertibles are always meatier due to the hinge mechanism and the extra support this requires.

While you can customize the CPU (Ultra 5 135U or Ultra 7 165U), RAM (16GB, 32GB, 64GB) and storage (256GB, 512GB, 1TB), every version ships with the same screen. It’s a 14in 2,560 x 1,600 IPS panel with a quoted peak of 500cd/m², though I measured 489cd/m². It covers 95% of the sRGB colour space with an average Delta E of 0.46, so near-perfect accuracy. With excellent whites, you couldn’t ask for more in a business laptop.

The keyboard is cut from the same cloth as the Dell XPS 13, with a pleasant feel to the keys. Again, though, I didn’t enjoy the off-center typing position. Then we come to the touchpad. Not only is it gigantic, at 135mm wide and 90mm tall, but if you take part in a Teams or Zoom call then four buttons appear at the top. These allow you to mute your mic, switch off the camera, jump to the chat function and share your screen.

I expected Dell to go all out on the webcam, too, but it’s a typical 1080p unit and doesn’t capture the level of detail you’ll find on the best offerings. Where Dell wins is for the granular control over audio in the Dell Optimizer app, including the option to remove background noise. This app is also where you can enable advanced security features such as presence detection, while fingerprint and face recognition are both on offer, too.

During benchmarking, I activated Ultra Performance in Dell’s software to give the system’s Core Ultra 7 165U every opportunity. Two small fans keep the CPU cool, but even in this supercharged mode I rarely heard any noise. The exceptions were during extended tests such as Cinebench 2024, with the multicore section particularly strenuous. A score of 460 highlights that the 165U is built for efficiency rather than outright speed – as highlighted by its incredible battery life for an Intel laptop – but in day-to-day use, you’ll have no issues with this laptop’s performance. It should do sterling service for years.

The first three of these are covered by the Dell ProSupport warranty that comes as standard, but this Latitude laptop is built with maintenance in mind. Standard crosshead screws keep the base secure, and the owner’s manual provides a detailed guide on how to replace components, from the WAN antenna module to the speakers that sit either side of the keyboard. And those speakers are excellent, delivering a quality I’d expect from a consumer laptop rather than a business machine.

Some businesses may be similarly surprised by a laptop that only offers USB-C ports, with two on the left and a third on the right. Aside from a 3.5mm combo jack and security lock, that’s your lot. Dell provides a tiny USB-C to USB-A dongle, and it’s just about small enough to stay in a port permanently, but there’s plenty of space for other ports on this 16.3mm-thick chassis so it’s an oddly restrictive choice.

Perhaps Dell is looking to the future rather than the past, recognizing that in five years USB-C ports will be the default, and that certainly reflects the progressive feel of the Latitude 9450 as a whole. Ports and price aside, I can’t find anything to fault in this high-quality convertible.

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Video conferencing giant Zoom has announced a series of AI-powered features designed to improve worker productivity, including digital avatars for those who don’t want to show their face.

Announced at its Zoomtopia 2024 event, the new releases included AI Companion 2.0, an upgraded version of its assistant, which promises to deepen the integration of generative AI within the company’s app.

Zoom AI Companion 2.0 will include a persistent side panel that integrates across Zoom Workplace, contextual understanding based on ongoing interactions and previous conversations, advanced synthesis of information from emails, calendars and uploads, web connectivity for real-time information gathering and action tracking to automatically detect and complete tasks across workflows, likening the feature to a personal assistant.

Zoom goes all-in on AI

The company confirmed that the upgraded AI Companion will roll out in the coming weeks at no additional cost for paying Zoom Workplace customers.

Further blurring the boundaries between digital and real life, mobile devices running the Zoom Workplace app can leverage AI Companion to create summaries and action items from face-to-face interactions.

To coincide with the announcement, Zoom also announced a custom add-on for AI Companion for $12 per user per month. Set to arrive in the first half of 2025, it will bring a more customized AI Studio, integration with third-party apps like Atlassian, Workday and Asana, and AI-generated avatars for Zoom Clips for presentations.

Speaking about AI Companion 2.0, CEO Eric Yuan added: “This is more than an evolution; it’s a complete overhaul of how we get things done in the digital age.”

Besides Zoom’s efforts to improve its Companion-branded assistant, the company also announced a suit of upgrades to its Workplace ecosystem – apps and features with specific purposes that benefit from artificial intelligence enhancements.

The new Zoom Tasks uses this AI to detect, recommend and complete tasks based on conversations across Workplace, while Zoom Phone has gained support for real-time queries and summaries.

Users can also generate voicemail greetings based on their voiceprint to avoid having to manually change voicemail messages according to calendar schedules, such as when they’re away on vacation, while Zoom Docs gets a handy upgrade including new data table views and upgraded permission controls.

“Our vision is to create an AI-first work platform for human connection that empowers teams to achieve more than ever," Yuan noted.

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The past few years have been tough for the average consumer. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, consumer prices have risen by 3%, 5%, and 6% over the last three years. The consumer industry isn’t the only industry impacted either.

Just look at the world of enterprise tech, for example. In November of 2022 — back when the consumer price index was busy setting records of the worst kind imaginable — enterprise tech prices were quietly climbing at a rate 4 times higher than that of overall market inflation. What’s worse, this came at a time when organizations were setting records for average SaaS portfolio size. For a time, 1 in every 8 dollars spent by modern organizations went directly to SaaS costs.

Gathering Economic Storm Clouds Cast Towering Tech Stacks in a New Light

That is, until, some sudden economic headwinds caused the powers that be in the business world to second guess their towering tech stacks (and the eye-watering expenses associated with them). And so, today, we find ourselves in a period of “stack streamlining” — or, for those that view the situation with a bit more vitriol, “trimming the tech fat.”

No matter what you call it, it’s a wise move for most businesses to cast a critical eye on their SaaS expenditures. However, it’s important to remember that not all SaaS solutions are built equally. While some tools undoubtedly fall into the category of fluff, others are downright indispensable. Unfortunately, it’s not always readily apparent which applications fall into which categories.

That’s why, in this article, we’ll take a look at some tips for how to conduct a measured, effective tech audit; and also make the case for why almost anything in the cybersecurity space should be considered absolutely last on the list of expendable enterprise apps in today’s rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape.

As the Consumer Price Index Cools, Enterprise Tech Costs Continue to Climb

Back in 2022, when enterprise tech prices were busy blowing overall consumer inflation out of the water, the eternal optimists of the world were probably reassuring their peers that this would be a flash in the pan. However, over the ensuing 12-month period ending in November of 2024, nearly two-thirds (73%) of all SaaS vendors raised their prices even further, at an average year-over-year increase of over 12%. Worse yet, more than a few vendors made those double-digit price hikes look like modest adjustments. Webflow, for example, hiked the price of their flagship software by a jaw-dropping 23% in 2023 alone.

Although SaaS prices continued to outpace overall market inflation by more than 200% — the size of the average corporate SaaS portfolio reached an all-time high of over 370 applications. However, this highwater mark for enterprise SaaS adoption was short-lived.

Executives Call Bloated Enterprise Tech Stacks into Question

As you’ve probably already imagined, it didn’t take long for the average business decision-maker to look upon SaaS costs (along with practically every other source of capital expenditure) with a critical eye — and they weren’t exactly pleased with what they saw.

Just as SaaS portfolios were reaching all-time highs in size, another study from the same period revealed that less than half (44%) of companies’ SaaS applications were actually being regularly used by employees. At the same time, studies showed that the U.S. IT departments were wasting roughly $85B per year on bad tech. Due in part to revelations like these (along with other internal and external forces), by year’s end 2023, the average SaaS portfolio size had suddenly fallen in size by over 10% YoY.

As Your Business Considers Tightening Its Purse Strings, Beware Sacrificing Security Posture

In case you’ve missed it, the past few years have brought about some profound changes in the world of cybersecurity. With massive increases in advanced phishing attacks — such as business email compromise (BEC), spear phishing, and advanced social engineering — along with the arrival of generative AI, deepfakes, and a slew of other cutting-edge threats, CISOs and their teams are feeling the heat, to say the least.

In fact, in Splunk’s 2024 State of Security survey report, when asked what types of cyberattacks are most concerning, “AI-powered attacks” topped the list as the number one most anxiety-inducing type of attack. In the same report, 32% of respondents were most concerned about attackers using generative AI to optimize existing attacks, such as crafting more realistic phishing emails or refining malicious scripts. Another oft-cited concern is the possibility of less skilled, opportunistic hackers exploiting generative AI to drive a significant uplift in social engineering attacks — contributing to the 28% of respondents that worry that generative AI will help adversaries increase the volume of existing attacks.

While I’d argue that this is not the time to skimp on any form of cybersecurity, the fact that email still represents the number one threat vector, playing a role in upwards of 96% of all breaches today, if one slice of your security architecture must be prioritized it ought to be protecting your employees’ inboxes, and, increasingly, security professionals are coming to the conclusion that the only way to effectively fight these new, AI-enabled threats is by leveraging the adaptive intelligence of AI themselves.

Whether Budgets Are Set to Fall or Stall, Security Postures Will Be Put at Risk

As businesses look to assess the worth of various tools in their technology stacks, you will inevitably hear calls for compromise in the form of budget freezes — that is, rather than cutting budgets, simply freezing the current state of one’s stack in order to prevent any further cost increases.

While this may sound reasonable at first blush, not every part of your stack is in a position to be frozen in time. And that holds especially true in the field of cybersecurity. As we cited earlier, the modern threat landscape is changing at breakneck speed — with new, much more advanced (and often AI-enabled) attack types being discovered by the day. In such an environment, simply sticking with one’s legacy security solutions — such as secure email gateways (SEGs) — is often just as problematic as making active cuts; as these types of tools are fundamentally unfit to defend against today’s modern, AI-driven cyberthreats.

At the end of the day, the future of cybersecurity will be a battle between offensive and defensive applications of AI. And as of today, most security professionals are torn as to which side of the battlefield will emerge victorious. In the aforementioned State of Security Report from Splunk, just 43% of respondents felt that AI would benefit defensive capabilities the most, while 45% felt adversaries would win the day with AI. This marks an encouraging uptick from just eight months ago, where a similar report found only 17% of respondents thought AI would advantage defenders.

Strap In, CISOs: Cost-Cutting, Complacency Join AI on the Rapidly-Expanding List of Existential Threats to Organizational Cybersecurity

In 2020 and 2021 — just as remote work, endless Zoom meetings, and the use of sketchy public wi-fi networks at your local Starbucks were becoming facts of life — business leaders across the private sector recognized the very real and immediate need for increased investment in cybersecurity.

And so, for two triumphant years, double-digit budget increases became the norm throughout the field of cybersecurity. But, not for long. According to research from IANS and Artico, by 2023, the average cybersecurity budget increase had fallen to just 6%. And yet, for a sizable percentage of organizations, matters were even worse. In the same study, well over a third (37%) of survey respondents said their organizations’ cybersecurity budgets had either remained flat or were reduced in fiscal year 2023.

While we’ve most certainly seen purse strings tighten as of late, most of today’s analysts are forecasting that tech budgets will in fact continue to grow — rather than contract — over the next 12 to 24 months — albeit at slower rates than we’ve seen in the past.

Perhaps most importantly, cuts and freezes won’t be instituted uniformly across operations. That’s why, as cost-cutting initiatives continue to gain steam, it’s up to the cybersecurity community to make the case to leadership that their budget is one that simply cannot be skimped on — and leading vectors such as email should be bolstered at any costs.

And for those not well-versed in the art of internal advocacy, hopefully this article gives you a good place to start.

We've listed the best secure email providers.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

Zoom is cutting back on its stock-based compensation, according to a recent report by Bloomberg.

The move comes amid growing concerns about stock dilution, which negatively impacts the value of existing shares, and marks on ongoing trend across the industry with Salesforce and Workday carrying out similar measures.

In a memo to employees, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said that the decision was made because the company had been issuing equity at an unsustainable rate.

Zoom to scale back stock-based compensation

The CEO confirmed: “We grant a significant amount of shares each year that has led to very high dilution. Put simply, we are granting too much equity and must proactively reduce it.”

Rewarding employees with stock and making shares available at a discounted rate has been common practice among tech firms for years, however it has now reached the point where alarm bells are ringing for investors and leaders who are concerned about dilution.

After hitting a $559 peak in late 2020 during the onset of the pandemic, Zoom stock has plummeted. Now at $67.53, prices fell as quickly as they rose with values dipping below $100 in early 2022.

To manage the dilution caused by widespread stock issuance, companies like Zoom, Salesforce and Workday have had to adopt tighter controls on stock-based compensation.

Yuan added: “This issue isn’t unique to Zoom; our peer group is facing similar challenges.”

More broadly, Zoom has struggled with the tough economic conditions that followed the pandemic. The company’s biggest pandemic-induced layoff, affecting around 1,300 workers, happened in February 2023. Since then, a series of other redundancies have followed including around 150 workers earlier this year.

The company continues to invest in AI in order to maintain its household name status as a worldwide provider of online collaboration tools.

TechRadar Pro asked Zoom to comment on the stock-based compensation decision. Any update will be posted here.

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Zoom has announced the open beta availability of AI-powered name tags for Zoom Rooms, which it says will make it easier for virtual participants to identify co-participants.

With the launch of digital name tags, the video conferencing company hopes to address inclusivity concerns surrounding modern hybrid working setups, harnessing a sense of connectivity.

The system is based on an opt-in automatic recognition system, powered by artificial intelligence, however users concerned about their privacy with the digital solution can also opt to manually add their own name tags.

Zoom Rooms gets new smart name tags

By implementing this option, Zoom hopes to eliminate the awkward moments when co-participants are unsure of one another’s names by overlaying tags over individuals, even when appearing on a single video feed such as via a single camera in a shared office space.

The California-based software maker said: “This innovation is particularly beneficial when teams are meeting for the first time or when meetings include external parties, as it helps participants quickly connect and collaborate.”

An admin enables smart name tags, but individuals must then enroll and consent to the feature.

The addition of smart name tags comes in response to an overwhelming majority (95%) of business leaders stating that their organization has become more flexible over the past two years, with another four in five (82%) planning to boost flexibility over the coming two years.

Proudly proclaiming that Zoom Rooms has more than two million licenses, smart tags are likely to have a profound effect, even if, for the most part, they go unnoticed.

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In the latest step on its quest to become an ‘everything app’, Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) is now exploring video conferencing.

X employee Chris Park shared a screenshot of the tool to his profile, revealing the company recently conducted its first internal video call using the new tool, dubbed X Conference.

Park claimed initial feedback was positive, and the company plans to add features such as speaker pinning and improved notifications for when users leave or join calls. The developers are also likely working on reducing how much the interface flickers between speaker views in order to prevent the speaker from seeing themselves so frequently.

X Conference

Among the comments was a fire emoji from Musk himself, suggesting that the post is indicative of an upcoming launch and not just a rumor.

App developers exploring the new tool suggested that it could also be supported within the iOS app, and that unique meeting codes could be added for improved security.

The development follows X’s recent moves to challenge platforms like LinkedIn for job listings, and PayPal for payments, with the company now setting its sights on the likes of Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams in the video meeting space.

Despite being a new feature, X has already been using live video streaming via the Spaces feature, which could integrate with X Conference, if not at least inspire it.

However, the platform hasn’t been without its share of criticism since the Musk takeover in late 2022. Specifically, users expressed concern over the lack of proper IP masking and the on-by-default approach for the new calling feature.

Given the controversy surrounding the platform – and its ownership – demand for an X-owned video conferencing platform is unclear, however with hybrid and remote working continuing to be popular across the world (even if Musk isn’t a fan), there’s undoubtedly space for one more online collaboration tool in the space.

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Remember when workers were sent home as the severity of the pandemic began to reveal itself, leaving employees with little more than Zoom through which to communication and collaborate?

Several years later, the video conferencing platform is continuing to grow, with the working world showing no signs of ever returning to the office entirely.

What’s more, Zoom is jumping on the AI bandwagon, and by staying on top of the emerging trend, revenues are continuing to climb.

Zoom is going from success to success

The company recently announced its quarterly earnings, citing strong demand for its AI-powered collaboration tools designed to cater to hybrid work models. In the most recent three-month period, Zoom reported a revenue of $1.16 billion, up a steady 2.1% year-over-year.

Since hitting all-time highs throughout the pandemic, Zoom has turned its attentions to integrating artificial intelligence into its products, including its Contact Center platform. The company is already starting to reap the rewards, with shares rising 3% in after-hours trading following the earnings announcement.

“Zoom Contact Center racked up several marquee customers, including its largest single order deal to-date, highlighting our ability to win competitive deals for full scale, customer-facing deployments with our higher-end packages that utilize advanced AI features to enhance agent performance," noted Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan.

However, some have suggested that the company has been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time twice in a row, indicating that Zoom must continue to expand its product offerings to maintain its momentum and prove it’s more than just a one-hit pandemic wonder.

The company now expects fiscal 2025 revenue between $4.63 billion and $4.64 billion, up around $20 million from its earlier projections.

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Your next big business Zoom call could be a truly blockbuster occasion after the company announced a major upgrade in capacity for calls.

The video conferencing platform will now be able to support up to a million attendees on a single-use webinar as Zoom calls continue to be a popular medium for organizations to reach a bigger audience.

The company says the expansion will help "transform how large-scale communications are conducted", letting hosts and audiences across the world interact seamlessly - provided their internet connection is good enough, of course.

More Zoom for your buck

The news forms part of a selection of new webinar options from Zoom in addition to its monthly and annual webinar subscription options.

Going forward, customers will be able to select webinars for 10,000, 50,000, 100,000, 250,000, or the top-tier one million attendee capacities. Zoom says its webinars can host sessions up to 30 hours long, and feature up to a thousand interactive video panelists, bringing a full conference experience to attendees.

Customers will receive support from Zoom's Event Services team to make sure the event goes off without a hitch, and will be able to access a host of analytics and performance reports on their audience to help improve future events.

The company says the new webinar experience can help not just big businesses, who will now be able to host calls with their entire workforce, but could also help public sector organizations looking to communicate with large, diverse populations, or even entertainment businesses or celebrities looking to reach as many of their fans as possible.

“Zoom’s expanded capacity webinar offering is revolutionizing the way organizations can seamlessly connect and engage with massive audiences,” said Smita Hashim, Chief Product Officer at Zoom.

“Now event organizers have the flexibility and power to host truly interactive experiences on an unprecedented scale and the ability to purchase large single-use webinars.”

The announcement follows the news that US Presidential candidate Kamala Harris recently broke the record for the highest attendance of any Zoom call, with a reported 200,000 attendees present.

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Zoom has signalled its attempt to crack the office software market with the launch of its own word processor tool.

Available now, Zoom Docs is the video conferencing company's move to offer a wider variety of tools, meaning users can potentially collaborate and create across a single platform.

First announced in October 2023, the new offering is heavily AI-powered, backed up by the company's Zoom AI Companion generative AI assistant, promising to boost creativity and productivity across the board by doing away with repetitive or dull tasks.

Zoom Docs launch

This Zoom AI Companion backbone will allow users to create meeting summaries from their Zoom video calls and meetings, as well as Team Chats, to create or start writing and collaborating on documents such as an action list or wrap-up report.

Users can also start or schedule meetings from a Zoom Doc, streamlining the process of getting colleagues together in a single place, and can quickly create, share and collaborate on docs during a meeting in real time, before sharing across the Zoom Workplace suite afterwards.

Zoom Docs uses content blocks to build a document using a modular approach, allowing for a truly customizable layout, with the addition of images, tables and bullet blocks helping craft exactly what they need.

Colleagues or contacts can be asked to collaborate via mentions, with comments and threads allowing for multiple opinions and opportunities for feedback. Up to a hundred users are able to collaborate on a Zoom Doc, but permissions or access can be quickly added, changed or removed where necessary.

When a document is ready, users can also ask the Zoom AI Companion to help edit or change the tone to make it more acceptable for a certain audience, as well as being able to quickly summarize or query the content to make sure all the key details are present.

“Zoom Docs is our first Zoom Workplace product with generative AI built in from the ground up; it effortlessly transforms information from Zoom Meetings into actionable documents and knowledge bases, so teams can stay focused on meaningful work,” said Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom.

“Zoom Docs is included at no additional cost with Zoom Workplace paid licenses, creating even more value for our customers. With AI Companion available every step of the way, Zoom Docs is purpose-built to empower people to ‘work happy’ and give them more time back in their day.”

The company says Zoom Docs will be included with all paid Zoom Workplace plans, to users of the Zoom Workplace app, version 6.1.6 or later. Basic (free) Zoom users will be able to create up to 10 shared docs and unlimited personal docs without AI Companion.

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A recent fundraising event by US Vice President and presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris has been claimed as the largest Zoom call ever held.

Vice President Harris’ fundraising event ‘White Women: Answer the Call’, which raised over $11 million for her recently announced presidential campaign, reportedly broke the record for the highest attendance of any Zoom call, with a reported 200,000 attendees present on the video conferencing platform.

The 200,000 strong Zoom participants reportedly overwhelmed the call at one stage and even ‘flooded’ the campaign donation link. This does seem to have been a temporary hitch, and the Zoom call has been hailed as a huge success. 

Zoom Boom

The news is the largest in a series of stunningly popular virtual grassroots campaign events for Harris, including ‘Win With Black Women’ and ‘White dudes for Harris’, which are said to have raised $2m and $4m respectively.

By harnessing the fresh energy of its new candidate, the Democratic Party has found great success with the ‘Zoom Boom’ fundraising strategy, with the DNC reporting it broke records with over $6.5 million raised in one day (July 21st) through grassroots donations. 

The record-breaking rally comes after Harris stepped up to the presidential nomination after current President Joe Biden pulled out of the 2024 race. In the week since, a seemingly revitalised democratic campaign has raised over $200 million in donations and gained 170,000 volunteers.

Digital strategy and virtual campaigns have become increasingly crucial in recent years, with the COVID-19 pandemic pushing candidates to turn to online fundraising events. 

Historically, this has produced mixed results for the Democratic Party - with candidates like Bernie Sanders’ online events attracting over five million viewers, but Joe Biden’s first virtual townhall dubbed a ‘technical nightmare’. 

Virtual campaigning has unlocked the potential for exponential growth in audience - but can tech keep up? 

Digital outreach is allowing political candidates to connect with voters from across the country without the expensive rallies and time consuming travel. It’s clear digital events will remain central to political campaigning for the foreseeable future, and Team Kamala is taking full advantage of an excited young audience and gaining valuable momentum ahead of the November 2024 election. 

Zoom has declined to comment on the claim.

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Making sure your workplace presentations are at the highest level should soon be easier than ever due to a welcome upgrade across both Google Meet and Zoom.

The two video conferencing giants have announced further interoperability between their platforms to allow users the ability to present content via a wired HDMI connection.

This will mean users can not only present HDMI content into a Zoom Meetings from Google Meet hardware devices, but also allow Google Meet meetings from supported Zoom Rooms, hopefully cutting down on hardware issues and letting you get up to speed quickly.

Switch here

In a Google Workspace update blog post, the company says its move will, "make it even easier for our customers and their users to connect and collaborate with people outside of the Meet ecosystem."

The interoperability will be switched on by default across Zoom and Google Meet devices, but admins can turn it off if they desire using the Workspace Admin console.

It will be available to all Google Workspace customers with Google Meet hardware Chrome-based devices, and is rolling out now.

The launch is the latest in a number of upgrades for Google Meet aimed at making it more engaging and interactive for users. 

Recently, the platfom announced it would bringing its "Companion Mode” second screen tool to the Meet app for Android and iOS devices, offering a quick way to participate in meetings without opening a laptop, and giving more flexibility to the way users work and meet.

Users can also now transfer between a call on a mobile device to a laptop (or vice versa) with just a click using its new "Switch here" function. This should prove incredibly useful for those on the move, for example if you are heading into the office, but are running late for a call, so have to start it on your phone, before switching to your PC or laptop when you get to your desk.

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Zoom has announced a new AI-powered feature designed to streamline routine tasks and boost the efficiency of employees working on mundane, administrative projects.

With the introduction of Workflow Automation on Zoom Workplace, the video conferencing giant hopes workers will be able to focus on more meaningful work, freeing up employee time to address ongoing skills shortage concerns.

Integrated into Zoom Team Chat, Workflow Automation allows users to create complex workflows across Zoom Workplace and third-party applications with the help of generative AI.

Zoom Workflow Automation to free up more worker time

The main functions of Workflow Automation include productivity boosts, simplified workstreams and a user-friendly, no-code solution with pre-built templates for everyday tasks like onboarding and approval processes.

“Workflow Automation helps teams by taking the guesswork out of setting up workflows and helps cut down on tedious and repetitive tasks," noted Wei Li, head of Zoom Team Chat at Zoom.

Users can set up sequential, conditional or switch-based workflows so that they can automate a variety of paths and outcomes, which the company says will help to speed up response times and ensure efficient handling of queries.

Although workflows are designed to optimize efficiency, setting them up and maintaining them can be complex and can often require skilled workers. In recognition that company budgets are restricted and talent acquisition has become harder, the tool uses a no-code approach, which makes it easier for less tech-savvy team members to use.

Zoom has also committed to rolling out more templates over time as it learns what companies want.

Zoom Workflow Automation is currently a beta product that is available to eligible paid Zoom customers at no extra cost. Once it reaches general availability, paid plans will include unlimited standard workflow runs and a set allotment of premium runs.

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The founder and CEO of video conferencing company Zoom wants AI avatars to take your place, despite meetings being the entire point of his company.

Yuan made reference to the idea of having a ‘digital twin’ that you can ‘count on’, presumably to say all of the things you would say in an interview anyway, in an interview with The Verge.

“We’re not there yet,” said Yuan, “but that’s a reason why there’s limitations in today’s [large language models]. Everyone shares the same LLM. It doesn’t make any sense. I should have my own LLM — Eric’s LLM, Nilay’s LLM. All of us, we will have our own LLM. Essentially, that’s the foundation for the digital twin."

Your own personal LLM

“Every morning I wake up, an AI will tell me, ‘Eric, you have five meetings scheduled today. You do not need to join four of the five. You only need to join one. You can send a digital version of yourself,’” he went on. 

“For the one meeting I join, after the meeting is over, I can get all the summary and send it to the people who couldn’t make it. Again, I can leverage the AI as my assistant and give me all kinds of input, just more than myself. That’s the vision.”

I can kind of see why Yuan wants Zoom to expand its brief: the company was the breakout star of a global pandemic, and now you’re spoilt for choice if you want to have a meeting from the comfort of your own home while wearing a buttoned shirt over a penguin onesie.

The company needs to survive for the shareholders’ wellbeing. It’s super relatable. However, this idea’s a bit… ridiculous, isn’t it? Most of the Verge interview is in ‘there are no bad ideas’ mode, but I am not that mode.

There’s some argument to be made for notes on meetings to be made and sent automatically to be sent - but that’s nothing new. I don’t even have to check our archives to Microsoft’s Copilot software already does this, as does actual Zoom, without the bell and whistle of an avatar purporting to be you in the meeting. Nothing meaningful is being added here.

So, you can either send a robot version of yourself to annoy your co-workers / minions, or a journalist who has taken an hour out of their day to find out that you can’t be bothered. 

The future Yuan is positing of a journalist’s personal LLM and a CEO’s LLM talking to each other to create content, or whatever, is violently bleak in itself, but then Yuan can’t help but let slip that, underneath his desire for an artificially intelligent digital twin who can reliably impersonate him, is his desire to manipulate that AI bot so that it can manipulate others.

“Sometimes I don’t join a sales call with customers. I know my weakness before sending a digital version of myself. I know that weakness. I can modify the parameter a little bit. [...] For that meeting I say, “Hey, tune that parameter to have better negotiation skills, send that version, and join.”

And then there’s the inevitable nightmare of an executive’s perfect artificial self, attuned for a specific purpose, being wielded against a consumer public. If you’ve made a mistake - maybe you've turned AI into a massive, sweeping security risk - send your AI hologram with the ‘contrition’ fader cranked to 11. Have a disappointing product that you’ve placed arbitrary limits on in the pursuit of infinite growth? Set that ‘sincerity’ dial to max for your keynote announcement vid, baby. 

Here we see a treatment of the symptoms, not the disease. If you don’t need to join four of the five meetings, those meetings shouldn’t be happening, and just not turning up is also an option. Don’t window dress it. 

Talk to the journalists you want to talk to, but don’t foist your robot tribute act on the ones you don’t just because you’re too socially awkward or on enough of a power trip to be honest about that.

As a journalist, that this idea has even come up makes me even less likely to want to talk to anyone who runs a company, because I’d want to pick their brain, not the machine-learned knowledge bank that they want me to pick.

I don’t get it. I think I’m supposed to be excited about it in the pursuit of technological advancement, but I actually see it deepening the divide between consumer and company. You are putty, there to be oblivious to leading arguments and deceit so that you submit to becoming a number on a spreadsheet.

If we’re now at the point where executives can’t even be bothered to do their own false sincerity, then that divide is clearer than ever, and you need to be thinking more critically about what a company is putting in front of you, especially as AI improves and it becomes less and less clear how much is real and what is synthetic.

The implications of this are woeful, and anything that’s been implemented as an evil plot in Doctor Who is objectively a horrible idea. However, Yuan deserves some credit for having made a thought-provoking pitch for CEOs being the perfect job to be eradicated and replaced by artificial intelligence.

An AI LLM of me wouldn’t come out with that, so color me uninterested.

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Meta has decided to pull the plug on Workplace, its enterprise communication platform designed to take on the likes of Slack, that never really took off.

Once envisioned as a significant player in business communication and productivity, other services piggybacked on the pandemic to rise to the top, leaving Workplace struggling to catch up.

Facebook’s parent company has now confirmed that the online collaboration and communication app will be phased out over the next two years, giving customers until May 2026 to find another suitable solution.

Workplace users given two years to find an alternative

Initially launched as Facebook @ Work before being rebranded as Workplace, the platform was designed to facilitate communication. 

However, despite attracting some pretty big customers, including Spotify, Starbucks and Walmart, the platform faced mounting challenges from more established rivals like Teams.

TechCrunch’s report on the shutdown cites an unnamed source, detailing Meta’s future plans and its reason for sunsetting Workplace:

“We are discontinuing Workplace from Meta so we can focus on building AI and metaverse technologies that we believe will fundamentally reshape the way we work.”

As part of the closure, Meta has appointed one single preferred partner – Workvivo, a similar product sold by Zoom. Meta has committed to helping customers migrate to Workvivo.

Customers have been given until August 31, 2025 to continue using the app, by which time they will need to have found another alternative. Between September 1, 2025 and May 31, 2026, Workplace will only supporting reading and downloading existing information in order to facilitate migrations. During this time, subscription charges will be wiped.

Workplace’s Core Plan costs $4 per user per month, with a small handful of add-ons available for an additional $2 per user per month. Workvivo, which has attracted customers including Amazon, RyanAir and Virgin, does not disclose pricing.

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Google has ‘begun commercializing’ Project Starline, its 3D video conferencing - or, as it calls it, its ‘magic window technology’, with a partnership with hardware manufacturer HP.

First announced back in 2021 amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, Starline aims to recreate the feeling of being in the same room as other people when that isn’t a possibility.  Though face-to-face contact isn’t so much of a far-off fantasy anymore, Google is pushing on, with a press release touting ‘advancements in AI, 3D imaging, and other technologies’ as powering the product.

Starline, which ‘relies on custom-built hardware and highly specialized equipment’, was previously confined to Google offices and selected partners, but now the company is preparing to bring the hybrid work product to business customers by 2025 - starting with common video conferencing apps like Google Meet and Zoom. 

The ‘future of collaboration’

HP’s President of Personal Systems, Alex Cho, is keen to stress that there’s much more to Starline’s than anything a basic webcam and microphone (or business laptop) can achieve.

“With more than half of meaning and intent communicated through body language versus words alone, an immersive collaboration experience plays an important role in creating authentic human connections in hybrid environments,” he says.

The official line in the press release is that tricking your brain into feeling as though you’re in the same room as a colleague increases attentiveness, memory recall, and, um, ‘an overall sense of presence.’  

Google and HP almost certainly have research to push this narrative, but for this writer’s money, experiencing Starline solely through PR bluster and representative GIFs, the product feels superfluous, especially when the opening pitch is ‘you can talk, gesture, and make eye contact with another person’ - nothing new.

If offices want to invest in this technology, that’s their prerogative, but then - aren’t employees in the office anyway? Don’t the benefits of Starline’s ‘immersive collaboration’ rely on both participants of a conversation having access to Starline booths? 

The simplicity of a webcam and microphone is that they’re compact and portable - built into almost every device in this day and age. Starline’s custom high-tech booths, like its bombastic name, not only feel like the antithesis of that, but also the ultimate premium. Though I’m prepared to eat my words later, my gut tells me Google will struggle to find enterprise customers thrilled about footing the bill.

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Popular collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Slack and Google may be required to implement end-to-end encryption and interoperability if used by US federal agencies.

Legislation put forward by US Senator Ron Wyden, titled as the Secure and Interoperable Government Collaboration Technology Act is looking to boost security for such tools following a number of high-profile recent incidents.

Federal agencies don’t seem to use a single standard collaboration tool between them, making it necessary that when inter-agency communication does happen, it should be fully secure.

Communication is key

If written into law - which would most likely happen in 2025 due to the upcoming elections - the bill would require each collaboration tool used by federal agencies to be assessed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in order to understand how they can interoperate securely.

Email accounts linked to several agencies have been cracked by Russian hackers exploiting a chain of vulnerabilities linked to Microsoft corporate email accounts, and other government agencies have succumbed to a cascade of Ivanti VPN vulnerabilities that resulted in data exfiltration and persistent system access affecting businesses and government departments alike.

Speaking on the proposal, Wyden said, “My bill will secure the US government's communications from foreign hackers, while protecting taxpayer wallets. Vendor lock-in, bundling, and other anticompetitive practices result in the government spending vast sums of money on insecure software.”

“It's time to break the chokehold of big tech companies like Microsoft on government software, set high cybersecurity standards and reap the many benefits of a competitive market,” he concluded.

Once signed into law, federal agencies would have up to four years to ensure their collaboration software meets the standards and requirements set by NIST, so while it isn’t an immediate fix to some of the security issues the federal government is experiencing, it's certainly a step in the right direction.

Via The Register

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WiFi 7 is a quantum leap forward from WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E. With its faster speeds, lower latency, and significant capacity increases, WiFi 7 is a major evolution in wireless technology. It has much in common with WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E, but with some significant improvements to meet the growing data requirements of home and business users.

Now that standalone WiFi 7 routers and WiFi 7 mesh routers are on the market, you might be looking to upgrade. We’ll take a look at what’s changed, what’s stayed the same and what to consider when upgrading to WiFi 7.

What's new in the WiFi 7 standard?

The headline feature of WiFi 7 is considerably faster performance over WiFi 6. Our flagship WiFi 7 mesh router is capable of 2.4x faster throughput than WiFi 6. Up to 46Gbps total throughput is 4.8x the speed of WiFi 6, with speeds 2.4x faster for the same WiFi configuration.

As Internet Service Providers (ISPs) continue to offer faster internet connections at home and for businesses, WiFi 7 ensures your local network has enough capacity to support the increased download speed.

These speed improvements are possible thanks to two major upgrades: doubling the channel width from 160Hz to 320Hz, and more data density, increasing the amount of data that can be encoded onto a radio signal.

Greater channel width

Each WiFi band operates in smaller bands of 20/40/80/160MHz MHz for connecting to individual devices. WiFi 7 doubles the bandwidth to 320MHz. Effectively, this doubles the WiFi speeds to individual devices and adds a lot more bandwidth to support more devices.

Increased data density

WiFi 7 increases not only speed and bandwidth but also the amount of data that can be encoded onto a radio signal. This is measured by a standard known as quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). Where WiFi 6’s QAM limit was 1024, WiFi 7 offers an impressive 4096 (or 4K; the standard is also known as 4K QAM), boosting its peak rates to increase throughput. Each symbol transmitted can now carry 12 bits rather than 10 bits, meaning 20% higher theoretical transmission rates.

Both the greater channel bandwidth (320MHz) and increased data density (4K QAM) account for the 2.4x improvement in WiFi speeds between WiFi 6 and WiFi 7.

Multi-Link Operation (MLO)

The WiFi 6 standard (and previous generations) can support the 2.4GHz and 5GHz WiFi bands. One of the major feature additions of WiFi 6E has been the addition of a 6GHz band, offering a new way to connect without the congestion of 2.4GHz or 5GHz, a real boost in urban areas with lots of WiFi networks in range. However, until now a staple of WiFi technology has been the requirement that a client can only connect using one of these bands.

That changes with WiFi 7, as routers are able to connect across two different bands to a client device.

Imagine two highways leading to your destination. MLO is similar to giving these highways the flexibility to either spread the traffic across both routes or to quickly move traffic from one highway to another if one gets congested.

Mesh systems especially benefit from MLO as it allows for a router and a satellite, both capable of transmitting simultaneously across two different bands, to get the best possible performance.

This feature will also be very useful for switching from one band to another on your mobile device without losing the connection. If you are on a Zoom call and walk from the center of the house to the garden, WiFi 7 will allow your device to switch from 6GHz to 5GHz to 2.4GHz without dropping the call or buffering.

Flexible channel utilization

One key limitation with WiFi is that any kind of interference impacts the entire channel. However, by using “puncturing,” if a portion of a channel gets impacted due to interference, that portion alone can be blocked while continuing to use rest of the channel for data transfer. This makes WiFi more resistant to interference and ensures critical flow and latency are not impacted. Going back to our highway example, using WiFi 6, a pothole in a lane can make that lane unusable, but with WiFi 7 you can block the pothole, drive around and still use rest of the lane.

What hasn't changed?

With WiFi 7’s incredible specification, it’s easy to overlook how it builds on features and infrastructure already in WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E. As noted above, WiFi 6E and WiFi 7 both offer the same three bands, including the lightning-fast 6GHz band. Both feature tremendous bandwidth. Technology providers are still playing catch-up with WiFi 6E and WiFi 7, with new devices currently being introduced to unlock the full potential of both standards.

At present, the majority of mobile devices in use are still relying on WiFi 6 or earlier. Apple’s most up-to-date iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Pro and MacBook Pro laptops now support WiFi 6E, and the technology is available across many of the latest Windows laptops and Android phones.

WiFi 7 is the future, and we expect the standard will be adopted quickly on new laptops and phones. We’re already seeing announcements of gaming laptops, desktop PC motherboards and handsets with WiFi 7, and this is only set to continue.

So, investing in a mesh or router with WiFi 7 now is certain to ensure robust wireless performance for the foreseeable future.

Demanding users who plan to future-proof their home network for the next couple of years should consider adopting WiFi 7 devices when they are available. Serious gamers will appreciate the standard’s low latency and quick responsiveness. Those who engage frequently in VR/AR will benefit from WiFi 7’s incredible speeds and low latency. And those who always want the latest and greatest will enjoy knowing that their network will be ready to make the most of their future product purchases for quite a while.

WiFi 7 for business

While home users are more likely to be early adopters of the latest technology, faster wireless performance and future proofing are critical for small and large business environments too.

WiFi 7 will add capacity and bandwidth to support a greater number of wireless devices across a business, improving performance and productivity.

But for businesses, network reliability, security and ease of administration / deployment are major considerations as well. IT managers are naturally cautious of introducing risk to working environments. The final ratification and certification of the WiFi 7 standard in January 2024 is important therefore to guarantee a consistent feature set in all devices.

IP cameras, access points, IoT devices, business routers and more are all likely to benefit from the enhanced performance that WiFi 7 offers, along with workers’ client laptops and phones. WiFi 7 will improve performance for industrial wireless technology and introduce new applications thanks to its extra throughput, which could improve efficiency across entire businesses.

We've listed the best Wi-Fi extenders.

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

Remote work has dropped significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, although many are switching to a hybrid (office+remote) working schedule instead of a strictly office-based schedule. The rise of hybrid workplaces has spurred the need for software to manage this process effectively. 

It can be challenging for a company to transition to a hybrid model without the appropriate software. This model can disrupt communication and task management if not managed well. Fortunately, hybrid workplace software has made this model feasible, and we want to help you choose the right one. We’ll explain hybrid management software, how it works, its types, and the primary considerations for selecting the best one.

What is a Hybrid Workplace Software?

It refers to a computer program that helps you coordinate and manage hybrid work for employees. There’s no single hybrid workplace software. Instead, this term refers to the collection of programs facilitating remote collaboration and task management for hybrid workplaces. 

Types of Hybrid Workplace Software

The software comes in different forms, including:

1. Unified document management

A central hub for companies to store and manage their documents. Every employee should have access to this hub to retrieve relevant work documents. As an administrator, you can control who has access to which documents. You also get audit logs to monitor who accessed specific documents in case of leaks.

2. Business communication

A platform that enables employees to communicate effectively. Hybrid workplaces require seamless communication to work. Employees should be able to contact each other even though they aren’t all at the office at a given time. Hence, you need a platform that allows instant messaging for team members. 

3. Task management

A program that makes it easy for managers to delegate tasks to employees and track their progress. A task management tool is critical to every hybrid workplace, as employees must know their required tasks and deadlines despite working remotely.

4. Videoconferencing

Meetings are vital to every workplace, whether remote, office-based, or hybrid. A hybrid workplace needs a platform to host video meetings with employees working in or out of the office. This way, everyone stays on the same page regardless of location.

5. Desk booking software

A platform that companies use to schedule and manage desks and shared workspaces. Employees use this platform to book physical desks and workspace spots before they head into the office.

6. HR software

A platform that helps human resource (HR) teams manage employees. This platform helps with employee onboarding, performance reviews, workplace surveys, and other HR-related tasks.

Benefits of a Hybrid Workplace Software

Businesses can get many benefits from hybrid workplace software, including

1. Improved productivity

Hybrid workplace software helps improve productivity even as employees work from different locations. It facilitates seamless collaboration and communication between employees, allowing them to coordinate tasks and work effectively. 

Many studies have shown that hybrid or remote workplaces are as productive and, in some cases, more productive than office-based workplaces. However, software is required to coordinate hybrid workplaces to maintain this high productivity.

2. Flexibility

Hybrid workplace software provides flexibility for your employees. With the proper software, employees don’t have to adhere to strict 9-5 working schedules. Instead, they can work when they’re most comfortable, contributing to higher productivity. The software makes it easy for employees to stay on the same page while they work at their respective paces.

3. Greater access to talent

Strictly-office-based workplaces are increasingly going out of fashion. Many employees now prefer working at remote or hybrid workplaces. This situation applies significantly in the technology sector, where talent is vital to every company’s success. The software enables companies to manage hybrid workplaces effectively, giving them access to the talent pool increasingly demanding hybrid working schedules.

4. Continuous feedback

Hybrid workplace software enables you to get continuous feedback from your team. You can use software to analyze employee productivity and determine how to adjust your processes for higher productivity. You can conduct surveys and get feedback from employees about their working processes. You can communicate seamlessly with employees regardless of their location.

Hybrid workplace software makes it easy to interact with employees and get honest opinions they may not be comfortable sharing in person.

Examples of Hybrid Workplace Software

Let’s look at some fitting examples of hybrid workplace software: 

1. Slack

Slack is a popular team communication platform. It enables employees to communicate seamlessly and keep everyone on the same page. Users can chat one-on-one or participate in group chats. Employees can share files and make voice and video calls with multiple participants.

When writing a Slack message, you can ping any employee with their username to pass important information. Slack offers an intuitive interface that makes it enjoyable to use. It offers a free plan with limited features and paid plans to enjoy advanced features like 1:1 or group audio and video meetings and unlimited third-party integrations.

You can read our full Slack review for more information.  

2. Zoom

Zoom is the most popular video-conferencing software despite being a late entrant into the industry. This platform took off during the COVID-19 pandemic, as companies rapidly switched to remote work to reduce in-person gatherings and stave off the pandemic spread.

Since then, Zoom has cemented its status as the go-to video-conferencing solution for small, mid-size, and large businesses. Zoom’s strength lies in being a freemium service. Anyone can use the basic video-conferencing features for free, which includes up to 40 minutes and 100 attendees per meeting. Businesses can pay to extend their meeting hours and number of attendees.

With Zoom at your side, employees can always hold meetings even though they work partly from home. 

You can read our full Zoom review for more information. 

3. Miro

Miro is a prominent digital collaboration platform. It is best known for its virtual digital whiteboard, enabling employees to brainstorm and exchange ideas regardless of location. 

It’s common for offices to have physical whiteboards for employees to write down and exchange ideas. Miro just makes this whiteboard digital for remote or hybrid workplaces. Multiple people can collaborate on the same virtual whiteboard as they’d do in physical meetings.

Miro also provides tools for companies to build roadmaps and manage projects. It offers many features to facilitate collaboration in hybrid workplaces.

You can read our full Miro review for more information. 

Considerations for Choosing Hybrid Workplace Software

1. Cost

Cost is the first factor to consider when choosing hybrid workplace software. Whether you’re looking for a videoconferencing tool, collaboration tool, task manager, etc., you need a platform you can afford in the long term. You don’t want your organization to get disrupted because you can’t pay software bills. 

The good thing about hybrid workplace software is that most have transparent pricing. Expect a fixed monthly or annual fee depending on the number of users. For instance, Slack, Zoom, and Miro charge varying monthly or yearly fees for each user, and large organizations can get bulk discounts. 

Transparent pricing makes it easy to estimate what you’ll pay and decide if your budget is enough for a particular software in the long term. Many hybrid workplace tools offer 14, 21, or 30-day free trials, allowing you to test the features before making a final decision. If you’re unsatisfied after paying, there’s usually a window to get a full refund.

2. Ease of use

Navigability and ease of use are vital considerations when choosing hybrid workplace software. You need a platform with an intuitive interface your employees can easily navigate, especially non-technical employees. Overtly complex interfaces can frustrate employees and reduce productivity. They can also lead to costly mistakes.

We mentioned free trials earlier. A free trial allows you to test a software’s interface for intuitiveness and navigability without paying. You can check if the platform has a modern and responsive interface, with features arranged so users can easily access them. If you are unsatisfied, you can cancel your free trial and look for another platform.

3. Mobile app

A lot of work now occurs on mobile phones. In fact, mobile phones now account for nearly 60% of online traffic. Any hybrid workplace software without a mobile app is at a competitive disadvantage. 

Imagine your chosen videoconferencing solution lacks a mobile app; employees won’t be able to participate in meetings when it’s inconvenient to use a laptop, e.g., during a commute. But, with a mobile app, employees can hold voice and video calls from anywhere and keep the workflow smooth.

Any hybrid workplace software you choose should have mobile apps for both iOS and Android devices. The mobile app ensures that employees remain in sync regardless of location.

4. Scalability

Your company won’t stay the same size forever. You can have 100 employees today and 200 within a year, 150 today and 400 within a year, and so forth. Therefore, you need hybrid workplace software that scales reliably without affecting speed and performance. You should be able to add new user accounts with little hassles.

For instance, Slack makes adding new members to your workplace noticeably easy. This platform utilizes Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud servers, enabling it to handle increased usage without faltering. Any hybrid workplace tool you choose should be very scalable.

5. Customer service

Customer service is a crucial consideration when choosing hybrid workplace software. No software is perfect; bugs can occur anytime, leaving you needing external help to resolve. Before choosing a platform, check what customer service options they offer. Can you contact the support team by phone, live chat, or email? If so, can you contact them only during working hours or 24/7?

It’s not just being able to contact the support team. The team should be staffed by experienced persons willing to solve your problems. The best way to determine a platform’s customer support standing is by looking at past reviews. If you observe a high rate of complaints about customer support, it’s a sign to consider alternative platforms.

6. Security

You must consider security when choosing hybrid workplace software. Remote or hybrid work comes with security risks, and it’s necessary to find platforms that reduce these risks.

Any hybrid workplace software you choose should have sophisticated features to prevent data leaks and theft. To start, it should use advanced encryption algorithms to prevent malicious actors from stealing your data. The industry norm is the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which uses keys of 128, 192, or 256 bits to encrypt and decrypt data. If someone accesses the data in transit, it’ll be useless to them because they don’t have the required decryption keys.

Another security feature to look for is two-factor authentication, which requires two means of identification before granting access to an account. The first identification mechanism is the correct credentials (username and password), and the second is a unique one-time PIN sent to a linked phone number or email address. Two-factor authentication prevents hackers from breaking into your hybrid workplace platform even if they steal a legitimate user’s credentials.

Some organizations also use Single Sign-On (SSO), which allows employees to use a single ID to log into multiple platforms for greater convenience.

7. Third-party integrations

No hybrid workplace software can give you all the features you want. That’s why most platforms have integrations with third-party apps to provide extra functionality. For example, you can integrate Slack with third-party cloud storage platforms like Box and Dropbox, enabling you to import files from these platforms at the click of a button. You can integrate Zoom with Slack, allowing employees to join video meetings directly from a Slack channel or direct message.

Third-party integrations allow companies to add more features to foster employee collaboration. They significantly contribute to the success of a hybrid workplace.

It’s not only a matter of having integrations. The integrations should also be easy to set up. Preferably, you should be able to set things up in a few steps instead of needing a programmer to navigate many complex steps.

Conclusion

Hybrid workplaces are in vogue. Any company not offering remote or hybrid work (in an industry where it’s feasible) is at a competitive disadvantage. But, hybrid workplaces require various software programs to function. 

We have explained hybrid workplace software, its types, benefits, and the considerations for choosing one. Follow our tips, and you’ll likely choose software programs that’ll help drive your organization forward. 

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Zoom has unveiled its latest offering to the collaboration and productivity world: a brand new unified platform with AI tools.

Zoom Workplace provides one space for team collaboration, customer interaction and AI companion productivity boosting.

The new platform brings the entire Zoom ecosystem under one roof for meetings, team chat, and phone interaction, and can be seamlessly integrated into existing technologies.

Zoom AI Companion

The Zoom AI Companion offers the meeting summarization capabilities that we have come to expect from AI integrated workplace collaboration platforms, but also offers several other interesting features.

The AI companion can also help to prepare workers for meetings by providing information from past meetings, action items, and notes on relevant chats between meeting participants, saving on time that would otherwise be spent on manual catch up.

The companion can also automatically set reminders for important tasks mentioned in meetings, and offers third-party cooperation to integrate with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

The Zoom AI Companion will be included in the platform at no additional cost, and can provide meeting summaries for 36 languages in preview, helping large businesses across multiple regions and time zones communicate in the most effective way possible.

The AI companion will also be available for Zoom Phone, providing phone calls and SMS messages with the same summarization abilities offered for meetings.

Zoom Workplace

The Zoom Workplace platform also offers highly personalizable theme choices, alongside the ability for meeting hosts to set a unique virtual background to set the theme and tone of the meeting before it starts.

The enhanced multi-speaker view sports and adaptive subject prioritization to keep the spotlight on active speakers, and the AI-assisted picture adjustment can adjust the visual quality of a user's face in poor lightning.

The new unified platform also includes features for office-based organizations with the Workspaces tab allowing users to reserve conference rooms or quiet focus spaces, with wayfinding capabilities and visitor management tools built in.

Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research said, “Businesses are looking for AI-powered solutions that will help them move the dial by boosting employee productivity and team collaboration.” 

“Zoom’s newest innovations, including its release of Zoom Workplace and Ask AI Companion, demonstrate its commitment to deploying AI that is intuitive and effective across one platform to improve productivity and collaboration.”

Zoom Business Services

The Workplace platform also includes business services, aimed at tackling customer interaction through sales, marketing and customer service in one space.

Workplace can be configured to include WhatsApp and inbound email to help customer care teams better respond to the needs and concerns of their customer, with EU data regulation considerations being met with the ability to store important data in Zoom’s EU data center.

For those in the customer relationship management field, Zoom Contact Center provides team supervisors the ability to see their teams live engagements, with transcripts, summaries and customer sentiment delivered in real time.

Contact Center and Zoom Phone can be seamlessly integrated with PCI Pal to ensure payment details and important data is kept secure, and compliance needs are met instantly.

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Zoom has fixed a major vulnerability in its Windows apps that allowed threat actors to escalate privileges remotely.

The company’s offensive team recently found an improper input validation flaw in Zoom Desktop Client for Windows before version 5.16.5, Zoom VDI Client for Windows before version 5.16.10 (excluding 5.14.14 and 5.15.12), Zoom Rooms Client for Windows before version 5.17.0, and Zoom Meeting SDK for Windows before version 5.16.5.

The flaw is tracked as CVE-2024-24691 and carries a severity rating of 9.6 - critical.

Patching the flaws

Although the company did not detail the flaw, the publication speculates that it requires some level of victim interaction in order to be abused, citing the CVSS vector. This interaction, given usual hacking practices, could involve clicking a link, opening a malware-laden email attachment, or something similar.

Zoom has an automatic updater, so the next time you bring up the app, it should update on its own. For those that have disabled automatic updates, here’s a link where you can find the version 5.17.7 for Windows.

In the same advisory, Zoom also announced addressing six additional vulnerabilities, including one that allows privilege escalation through local access, three that allow information disclosure remotely, and one that allows for the denial of service, over the network. 

The company advises users to apply the patch as soon as possible to protect their endpoints.

Zoom is a popular cloud-based video conferencing service which companies often use to run remote meetings and calls, education, demonstrations, and similar. It rose to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic, quickly becoming the most-used application in the world. At one point, it had 300 million daily meeting users. 

This also attracted plenty of hackers who saw this as an opportunity to steal sensitive company data, putting the spotlight on patches and quick fixes.

Via BleepingComputer

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The Apple Vision Pro, the company's first push into the headset market, has officially launched, and although it's mainly targeted at consumers, we've rounded up the best workplace and business-focused apps available so far.

Featuring Apple's typically polished design (and astronomical price tag), the Vision Pro is a bold move from the company, but one it hasn't made lightly, given its existing reach across mobile, computing and wearables.

Although designed (and marketed) as a mainly consumer-facing device, it's clear that the Apple Vision Pro could also offer business and enterprise users a number of benefits - and several major companies have already leapt on the bandwagon and revealed their accompanying apps.

Microsoft 365

First up is Microsoft 365, aka the home of all your favorite workplace apps - the likes of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and even Microsoft Teams will all be available on the Apple Vision Pro.

The headset will look to offer a variety of new tools for Microsoft's apps, taking video conferencing in Teams to a new virtual plane, but also allowing for extra focus on those key Word documents.

Microsoft says the move will also let users better visualize data such as graphs in Excel spreadsheets, and help them practice PowerPoint presentations before speaking in front of an audience.

The apps will all be backed up by Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant, giving users a smarter and more intuitive way to access the files and information they need.

Zoom

If you're looking for a slightly different approach to video conferencing, Zoom has also revealed its app for the Apple Vision Pro, showing that virtual meetings and calls are set to be a major use case for the headset.

Zoom says its Apple Vision Pro app will help colleagues and co-workers in different locations feel much closer together, improving collaboration and connection. 

But it will also include a number of new features designed specifically for the Apple Vision Pro, such as its Personas feature to give an "authentic" representation of users on the call - including replicating facial and hand movements - and the ability to share 3D objects in much more detail, giving a new perspective on items. 

Webex

Following hot on the heels of Zoom and Microsoft Teams, fellow video conferencing giant Webex has revealed its Apple Vision Pro app.

Much like its competitors, the Webex app for Apple Vision Pro will allow users to participate in video calls projected into the virtual space provided by the headset's "infinite canvas". Participants can present content and collaborate easily, making it simpler to multitask, but also benefit from Webex features such as AI background noise removal, real-time translations, closed captions, live polling and Q&A by Slido.

Adobe Firefly

First announced in June 2023, Adobe Firefly is the company's AI art generator for consumers and businesses alike.

The company says its Apple Vision Pro app features a "purpose-built experience" for users looking to create and develop new artwork, advertising or marketing campaigns, or imagery such as logos.

In addition, the company's Adobe Lightroom tool will also be available on the Apple Vision Pro, giving users the chance to enjoy an immersive photo editing experience using the headset.

TeamViewer

TeamViewer may be more of a common presence in remote IT support and updates, but the company is making a pitch to go a significant step further with the launch of its TeamViewer Spatial Support app for Apple Vision Pro.

Currently in beta, the app lets a user with an iPhone work together with a remote expert equipped with an Apple Vision Pro, to talk them through the steps needed to make a repair on broken-down or malfunctioning machinery.

The TeamViewer Spatial Support app utilizes ARKit and a built-in LiDAR scanner to capture a detailed 3D model of the device in need of support, which is shared with the remote expert for a synchornized 3D experience.

Box

Online content storage service Box may sound like an unlikely partner for the Apple Vision Pro, but the company says its app can provide users with a range of new ways to engage with their files.

This includes possible scenarios such as a retailer using the Apple Vision Pro to see how a window display may look to customers via a design proposal in Box, or a construction company virtually visiting a building site to view how a project may look using blueprint files or progress images stored in Box.

Box also says its app can use Siri's dictation tool alongside hand and eye gestures to navigate through its app to track down the files you need, which can then be placed into your own "infinite desktop" for clearer views and better multitasking.

Keeper Security

As with most things in technology, the new world of spatial computing needs securing, and Keeper Security has become one of the first companies to launch a safety-oriented app for the device.

Keeper says its app will allow users to autofill their credentials when they login to Vision Pro apps. They will also be able to set Keeper as the default password manager instead of Apple's own iCloud Keychain, and business customers can also seamlessly login to Keeper with their single sign-on (SSO) solution.