Remote conferencing tool still popular despite security concerns.
Numerous media reports state that American technology company, Zoom has a new data centre in Singapore, one of its first in the Southeast Asia region.
The Singapore data centre brings Zoom’s total to 18 sites across the globe, with the vendor expanding its presence in India with a data centre in Bangalore.
According to Reuters News the company also plans to hire more Singapore employees, including engineers and sales staff, said Abe Smith, head of international at Zoom.
However, Zoom hasn’t been without controversy in the region. According to Reuters, security researchers have also discovered that Zoom rerouted some calls through its servers in China, even if those calls were placed outside China.
At the time the company said this took place in “extremely limited circumstances” and it had taken its mainland China data centres off an approved list of back-ups for users outside China.
In April the Asia Times also reported teachers in Singapore had dropped the technology over security fears.
Singapore’s Education Ministry investigated “very serious incidents” and teachers have suspended use of the app while security issues are ironed out, said Aaron Loh, from the ministry’s educational technology division.
At the time Singapore’s teachers have stopped using controversial video-conferencing app Zoom for remote education during the coronavirus lockdown, after intruders reportedly made lewd comments in a virtual class.
Cybersecurity firm McAfee’s research shows a correlation between the increased use of cloud services and collaboration tools, such as Cisco WebEx, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Slack during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with an increase in cyber-attacks targeting the cloud.
According to study titled Cloud Adoption & Risk Report – Work-from-Home Edition, there were significant and potentially long-lasting trends that include an increase in the use of cloud services, access from unmanaged devices and the rise of cloud-native threats.
These trends emphasise the need for new security delivery models in the distributed work-from-home environment of today–and likely the future.
