Zoom buys Keybase as it looks to enhance security efforts

Zoom Video Communications has bought secure messaging and file-sharing service Keybase for an undisclosed sum as part of a 90-day plan to enhance its security efforts.

The US video-conferencing company, which has come under scrutiny recently for privacy and security issues, said the acquisition - its first ever - "of this exceptional team of security and encryption engineers" will accelerate its plan to build end-to-end encryption that can reach current Zoom scalability.

The company’s chief executive officer, Eric S. Yuan, said: "There are end-to-end encrypted communications platforms. There are communications platforms with easily deployable security. There are enterprise-scale communications platforms. We believe that no current platform offers all of these. This is what Zoom plans to build, giving our users security, ease of use, and scale, all at once."

Keybase co-founder and developer Max Krohn will lead the Zoom security engineering team, reporting directly to Yuan.

Zoom has seen a massive rise in popularity since the coronavirus lockdowns began across the world, not just for work conferences but also for school lessons and as people look for alternative ways to keep in touch with their friends and relatives online. However, the company has had well-publicised issues with ‘Zoom bombing’- incidents in which strangers interrupt video conference calls.