Zoom CEO admits company "moved too fast" as privacy issues mount

Zoom's founder and CEO has admitted his company made "missteps" that should have been fixed before the service became so popular during the coronavirus pandemic.

Eric Yuan told CNN that the company had "moved too fast" and should have done more to enforce password and meeting room security.

The service is currently seeing a spike in usage as more and more people are using video conferencing to connect to work colleagues, family and friends. Recent reports have suggested that Zoom is now more popular in the US than Microsoft Teams, with its user base surging from 10 million to 200 million in recent weeks.

However, this has resulted in more scrutiny of the service as numerous security issues have come to the fore. From "zoomboming" to confusion over its level of encryption, Zoom has been dogged by security concerns, forcing its CEO to make public apologies.

"During this COVID-19 crisis, we moved too fast," he said. "Our intention was to serve the end-users, but we had some missteps. We should have done something to enforced password and meeting rooms and double-checked everything. We should have taken actions to fix those missteps.

"New user cases are very different from our traditional customer base where they have an IT team to support them. We've learned our lessons and we've taken a step back to focus on privacy and security."

Yuan was tougher on himself in an earlier interview with The Wall Street Journal, saying that he "really messed up as CEO" and that he felt an obligation to win back user trust.

Zoom's internal criticism follows a troubling few weeks where a number of problems have plagued the videoconferencing platform. Most recently, its been the target of a hack known as 'Zoomboming', where unwanted guests invade a meeting.

Questions have also been asked about the level encryption the service offers, as it was recently revealed Zoom didn't have end-to-end encryption between calls, despite saying so in its privacy policy.

The issues have seen a number of companies and organisations drop the services, such as the FBI and Elon Musk's SpaceX. Going forward, Yuan promised to make Zoom a "privacy and security-first company".