5 Essential Zoom Team Chat Security Features

While phone, email, and video conferencing solutions are common characters in an organization’s technology stack, many workers have also taken a liking to another modern communications tool — instant messaging. 

Zoom Team Chat is our enterprise-grade messaging solution that enables asynchronous communication and quick information-sharing. Not to be confused with in-meeting chat, Zoom Team Chat is a persistent messaging solution that comes included in the Zoom desktop client, which also houses a smattering of solutions, including Zoom Phone, Zoom Apps, Zoom Whiteboard, and more. 

As with all of Zoom’s solutions, we built our chat solution with security in mind. It comes with a host of security features designed to create a safe and secure environment for seamless communication. Here are five of those features:

1. External contact management: Account owners and admins can enable or disable the ability for users to chat with or add external contacts, and can view and remove any external contact that has been added. If this feature is enabled, you can add external Zoom users as contacts by specifying their email address. After the external user approves the contact request, you will be able to chat, share images and files, and meet instantly with them. If an external user is present in a chat or channel, there will be an “external” label next to that user's name and in the compose box. 

2. Link preview: A thumbnail preview will show up any time you share a public link in a chat or channel. This helps preview the website’s contents for other users, giving them a better indication of the link's destination. 

3. Set GIF rating: Account owners and admins can set a “rating” for the use of GIF images from GIPHY in Zoom Team Chat. They can establish if they want to limit GIFs to a G, PG, PG-13, or R rating, as rated by GIPHY, and users will only see GIF images with those ratings in their library in Zoom Team Chat. 

4. Chat Etiquette tool: Automatically identifies keywords and text patterns in Zoom Team Chat and in-meeting chat and helps prevent users from sharing unwanted messages, such as those that include inappropriate language. It is important to note that the Chat Etiquette policies are defined by account admins — not by Zoom — and the tool does not send reports/flags to account admins or anyone else. 

5. Advanced chat encryption: This feature allows for a secured communication where only the intended recipient can read the secured message. When advanced chat encryption is enabled, data at rest is encrypted by keys generated and operated on chat participants’ devices. Chat data in transit, however, is encrypted in transit using Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption. When advanced chat encryption is used, you will lose functionality for a few features. 

As a core aspect of our Zoom Workplace offering, which includes team chat, VoIP phone, whiteboard, and video meetings, Zoom Team Chat is just one piece of Zoom’s larger security strategy designed to help protect and support customers. Our instant messaging software easily flows into other Zoom solutions, helping to stitch together a unified communications experience that’s built with security and trust in mind. 

To learn more about Zoom’s approach to security, explore our Trust Center, a one-stop shop containing our privacy, safety, and security resources.