The buzz: Zoom’s security improves, Teams may help IT governance, and more access to Bloomberg.
Virtual meetings have been a godsend to corporate treasury executives sheltering in place, despite occasional glitches. In a recent Zoom meeting, NeuGroup members exchanged valuable tips about making their virtual interactions more efficient and effective.
Kudos for Teams. A few participants using Microsoft Teams while working from home heaped praise on the solution. Responding to requests to elaborate, one member called it “absolutely superb for team working,” because it allows audio and video calls but also enables colleagues to work simultaneously on Excel spreadsheets and other Microsoft 365 applications.
- “And there’s a very efficient follow-up mechanism—give someone a task, and they automatically get emails until they’ve completed it,” he said.
Curbing shadow IT. Free technologies such as Microsoft Teams can fall outside a company’s IT toolkit and governance framework—so-called “shadow IT.” A cybersecurity expert at the meeting said Teams runs on a Microsoft SharePoint backbone, so the corporate IT people supporting SharePoint can control access.
- “They can impose some degree of governance on the Teams environment,” he said.
Zoom news. Zoom remains the go-to virtual meeting service but raises security concerns, such as “Zoom bombings” when hackers disrupt confidential meetings.
- The April 27 release of Zoom 5.0, the expert said, provides significant security enhancements.
- “Don’t be surprised in the next weeks or months when you see a very aggressive advertising campaign by Microsoft to ditch Zoom and get on to Teams,” the security expert said.
Bloomberg: additional access. There is no need for one person to take on all Bloomberg terminal responsibilities for the group. A member noted that Bloomberg’s Disaster Recovery Services (DRS) allows multiple users to access a terminal subscription from different computers—one at a time, similar to an actual terminal.
- Extended to the end of June, DRS tops out at $35 per additional user.
- “We’ve been trying to operate off one terminal,” one treasurer responded. “I’ll have my team look into that.”
- Here’s how: https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/solution/disaster-recovery-services/
