“These teams are used to having great communication. Now you can do it through teleconferencing, but there are already teams worried about having their Zoom teleconference hacked in by another team. That’s been a question that’s been raised right now,” ESPN’s Adam Schefter said Tuesday on “Get Up.”
A few teams have publicly voiced their concerns about online safety. Ravens coach John Harbaugh explained his worries in a conference call with reporters Monday.
NFL DRAFT: 2-round mock | Top 100 prospects | Strangest moments
“Yeah, big concern,” Harbaugh said, via the Baltimore Sun. “Every time I read something in, like, the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times that talks about how messed up Zoom is, or some of these other deals … I immediately text it to our IT people, and [director of football administration] Nick Matteo’s one of those guys, and they assure me that we are doing everything humanly possible."
Rams COO Kevin Demoff also expressed concern about safety, speaking with ProFootballTalk’s Peter King.
“With the security aspect, which is probably the most important for teams. How do you make sure your conversations are protected? Someone could hack into this Zoom, and you’re probably not going to learn a lot," Demoff said. “Hacking into a team’s draft room on Zoom is probably a lot different. That would be my biggest concern just from an encryption standpoint of how do you have these conversations confidentially.”
There’s also this, from King:
A recent headline from the Washington Post reads, “School districts, including New York City’s, start banning Zoom because of online security issues.” In a recent statement Zoom said, in part, “Zoom takes user privacy, security, and trust extremely seriously.” This has become such an issue that there’s even a name for it: Zoombombing.
It’s not entirely clear just how the NFL plans to operate its virtual draft. But for teams wanting to communicate with all of its staff around the country, including other teams for potential trades, they’ll likely rely on teleconferencing tools such as Zoom. The NFL has several weeks to plan for this draft, and you can bet security will be one of the top priorities.
