Alternatives to Zoom: Top Reasons to Use Rocket.Chat For Secure Video Calls

As companies experience the outbreak of COVID-19, you're likely holding team meetings with Zoom, Skype or similar applications. While Coronavirus made these applications popular, it also exposed serious privacy issues and security problems.It was then that the search for secure messaging apps emerged.

When choosing an application, you need to be aware of the security of the information provided, but we know that when you download a video conferencing software, the recommended settings are the ones you normally use. The problem with this is that some of the privacy and security settings may come with vulnerabilities.

A study by dfndr lab, from digital security company PSafe, identified a series of frauds that use fake video call applications. Only in 2020, more than 44 thousand people have been victims of these attacks, according to the researchers.

Seeking high-security alternatives to Zoom? Check out how to found a secure messaging app and how Rocket.Chat ensures privacy in your video calls.

Why tools like Skype or Zoom might be unreliable for video calls?

Many remote companies trust proprietary-code platforms, such as Skype or Zoom, to communicate online.

Although easily accessible, they do not disclose how they actually function. They often are vague about how they technically handle user privacy and how your data is secured (or often not secured).

By using such applications, you take the risk of:

• Being Zoombombed in a private call (when strangers join your video call)
• Having your data routed out of the country and in turn not following data privacy laws such as GDPR, HIPAA, and CCPA.

An open source platform makes its source code available to users so that modifications can be made without any restrictions. This also makes it a much more safe alternative, as the open source allows everyone to know its features and understand its security processes.

How to find a safe platform for video calls?

When looking for a private and secured platform for video calls, you should insist on a few details:

• Transparency in the form of open-source code. So everyone sees how the platform works, and global security experts can examine the code upon every single release (and they DO it, because leading research institutions and security organizations are users of Rocket.Chat)
• Full control over your own configuration. No need to share with thousands of other companies
• Secure encryption options available (we'll explore this topic better in the next paragraphs)

Rocket.Chat's video calls: How do we compare to other tools?

Rocket.Chat is a communication hub that facilitates team collaboration and organizes conversations. It allows its users to choose how they will communicate, either by chat, video conference, audio messaging, file sharing or other omnichannel tools.

In other words: You control your data.

You decide whether to self host your instance on-premises and go with a highly-secure environment “that can even be ir-gapped in your private network".

If you decide to use Rocket.Chat's Cloud services to host your server, your data is stored in data centers in the US or Europe (as per your choice).

No surprises about where your data is routed through

You can run Rocket.Chat virtually on any hardware or private cloud. You control the flow of your data because all data flows through the network that you own. See a list of our supported deployment methods here.

No need to install external apps.

Rocket.Chat can be used via your browser, no plugins required. On mobile phones or tablets, Rocket.Chat is available FREE from Google Play and Apple App Store.

End-to-End encryption of chats

Rocket.Chat has the optional capability to encrypt your chats end-to-end. With this feature enabled, only the participants of a chat can decrypt and read the content of a message.

You can also choose on a channel-by-channel basis to enable the feature, in turn giving you the flexibility to decide about what remains private and what can be visible to other users of the system.

How to use Rocket.Chat to hold private video calls?

Rocket.Chat natively supports two main pluggable video conferencing systems: Jitsi and Big Blue Button. Both come with similar advantages as Rocket.Chat:

• Open-source
• Full control for administrators
• Transparent about how your data is used

Let's explore these two integrations.

1. Jitsi Integration

Jitsi is an open-source video platform to easily make secure video calls. At the heart of the Jitsi platform is Jitsi Meet, which let you have conferences on the internet. As a safer alternative to Zoom, Jitsi is also encrypted.

This means that the connection between two points, either the participants themselves or the participants and the video bridge of Jitsi is encrypted.

Check out this explainer video on how Jitsi's end-to-end encryption works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNKemVNrCbI

Since encryption is important for many organizations, how to combine the best of both?

Rocket.Chat can combine the best of both team chat and video call worlds. You can use Rocket.Chat's end-to-end encryption feature for a chat and Jitsi's peer 2 peer or video bridge encryption for your video /audio calls.

By doing so, you guarantee a reliable and robust group video chat, audio chat, and screen sharing experience. For even more control, you can run a private Jitsi server. Read more about Security & Privacy in Jitsi here.

Find here how to enable Jitsi in your Rocket.Chat environment.

2. Big Blue Button Integration

Born as an open-source video system for online learning, Big Blue Button rapidly became a great alternative for companies looking for data-privacy in their enterprise conferences.

This web-conferencing solution goes way beyond sharing screens and holding video calls. It relies on the same safe parameters that Jitsi uses, such as:

• It doesn't require external downloads: all you need is a credential to enter a call
• Only people invited to your private channels in Rocket.Chat are able to join calls
• No invitation links are generated in order to the meeting to take place, a quick click and you have the call started

To use Big Blue Button within your Rocket.Chat's environment, we suggest contacting our partner Elos. As you see, Rocket.Chat is a complete communication solution and a great alternative to Zoom in terms of high-security videoconferences.

Try it now and find out why this is the best option for your company.