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Slack Partners with Zoom

During day two of its Frontiers user conference, Slack and Zoom cozied up, with CEOs Stewart Butterfield and Eric Yuan, respectively, taking the stage together to lay out plans to work on a joint roadmap for the next version of the Zoom integration for Slack -- an integration already in use by more than 10,000 Slack teams monthly, up more than 200% in the last year, Slack said.
 
The next version will give users more context into team meetings and discussions, Slack said. In addition to being able to start and join Zoom meetings from within Slack, users will be able to see meeting details like who’s on the call before joining, as shown below.
 
Zoom-Slack integration 1
On the management side, admins will be able to change users’ default phone settings for their workspaces to Zoom, so voice calls will launch via Zoom. Of course, this means Slack will be adding Zoom Phone functionality, allowing users to call each other over cellular, data, or Wi-Fi connections, Slack said.
 
As covered elsewhere on No Jitter and touched upon in yesterday’s news coming out of Frontiers, Slack’s recently launched Outlook Calendar and Google Calendar apps already include a feature that allows users to join Zoom Meetings with one click through Slack (shown below).
 
Zoom Slack Calendar
The goal for Slack in partnering with Zoom is to continue its mission to make work better, in this case, by helping users “spend less time on meeting logistics and more time on the important business of decision-making and problem-solving,” Slack said in its blog.
 
Zeroing-In on Compliance, Security
Separately out of Frontiers yesterday, Slack announced security and compliance enhancements for HIPAA and mobile implementations, and discussed how customers ranging from government agencies to financial services firms are beginning to benefit from its support of enterprise key management (EKM), announced last month at Enterprise Connect 2019 (see related No Jitter coverage by UC analyst Irwin Lazar, of Nemertes Research).
 
One such customer is financial advisory firm Lazard, which has been working closely with Slack over the last year on security features related to EKM and bring-your-own-key, said Carmine Lizza, the firm’s CIO (and a panelist from our Enterprise Connect 2019 mainstage programming), said, “Now that these are embedded into the enterprise solution, we can successfully adopt it and take advantage of its features,” Lizza said, in a prepared statement.
 
For HIPAA compliance, Slack said it now supports protected health information (PHI) in files and messages -- enhancements aimed at healthcare organizations. Slack didn’t provide details in the blog post.
 
Finally, on the mobile security front, Slack is building more native mobile security controls to complement its Slack for Enterprise Mobility Management offering. These new native controls will help admins ensure data is secured even when it’s on a device that isn’t managed by the enterprise.
 
Specifically, admins will be able to configure Slack to block file downloads and message copying on mobile devices. They’ll also be able to set secondary authentication controls for such mobile devices, requiring users to use face ID, touch ID, or a passcode before accessing the application. And with a session management feature, admins can remotely wipe sessions so corporate stays secure if a device is lost or stolen.