Zoom and Thales collaborate for enhanced control of data encryption

Much more than a video meeting tool, Zoom is now a complete unified communications platform. Powered by artificial intelligence, it brings together solutions such as cloud telephony, chat, whiteboards, webinars, and tools dedicated to the customer experience, such as a contact center solution and a virtual agent. This integrated approach simplifies communications and facilitates collaboration for organizations of all sizes.

However, this expansion also requires focus on data protection measures, particularly in highly regulated sectors. Ensuring strict control over sensitive data, especially in cloud environments, is essential to maintaining compliance. With this integration, Thales can offer companies control over their Zoom data, while supporting compliance with the demanding international standards.

Zoom introduced Customer Managed Key (CMK) in 2022, enabling businesses to manage their encryption keys. This feature allows organizations to encrypt supported Zoom content, such as cloud recordings, voicemails and chat messages, with keys they can directly control. While leveraging CMK, data encryption keys are generated and managed under the customer’s control.

Storing encryption keys on third-party infrastructures is essential to go beyond these proven data protection systems and help support compliance with strict standards. Thales achieves this with its CipherTrust Cloud Key Management (CCKM) solution. By utilizing the AWS External Key Store (XKS) service, Zoom’s CMK service integrates with Thales’ CCKM infrastructure seamlessly. This allows businesses to manage their encryption keys independently outside of multi-cloud environments.

The integration from Thales offers significant benefits for businesses looking to protect their sensitive data while complying with regulatory requirements. By separating the management of encryption keys from hosted data, users benefit from enhanced control over data security while aligning their practices with the most rigorous standards, such as CSA CCM EKM-04.

Thales CCKM also simplifies key management, rotation, and synchronization by centralizing key management across multiple clouds and environments. The solution significantly reduces the time spent on these critical tasks, allowing IT teams to focus on other strategic priorities.

The collaboration between Zoom and Thales represents a significant step forward for businesses looking to secure their data while harnessing the power of modern collaborative tools. This solution demonstrates that data sovereignty and technological innovation can go hand in hand, offering organizations the flexibility and security they need to meet demands.