Microsoft Teams vs Zoom

Which one is the best for you?

Meeting anyone? Remember the good ole days when we all used to cram in to a conference room, pass around the muffins, slurp on our takeaway lattes, and talk over the top of each other?

Nowadays, with the new remote way of working, video calls ARE the new “business meeting” and often the new “phone call”.

Top perks of video Technology:

  • Streamlined communications.
  • Video ensures people are more engaged.
  • Faster responses and improved team communication.
  • Ability to connect from remote workspaces.
  • Ability to host large global meetings.
  • Improve collaboration and productivity.
  • Recording of meetings for those unable to attend.
  • Great platform for online events to be conducted.
  • Plus, you can see other peoples body language on a meeting (no more secret eye rolling at the boss Susan!)

What is Microsoft Teams?

Microsoft Teams is a communication platform included in Microsoft 365. Though Teams offers video conferencing capabilities, that’s far from its only use. The platform also includes chat and voice calling functionality and enables teams to share and edit files in real time via a shared virtual workspace. Teams is highly integrated with other products in the Microsoft suite, including Word, PowerPoint and Excel, making it a true collaboration platform.

What is Zoom?

Zoom is a communications platform that encompasses audio and video conferencing, chat functionality, video webinars and more. Zoom offers an entire marketplace of application integrations, including MailChimp, Zendesk, Marketo and even Microsoft Teams for additional extensibility. Though Zoom has been around since 2011, it’s seen stunning growth in 2020, increasing from 10 million daily meeting participants in December 2019 to over 300 million daily meeting participants in April 2020.

Consider your audience?

The first step is to consider who and what you are using video calling for. If the main focus is meetings amongst colleagues at an organisation that already uses Microsoft products—especially Office365—then the obvious choice for video calls is Microsoft Teams. Even if you do use Teams at work, you still might want to use Zoom for meetings with people external to your organisation as Zoom is still more well-known than Teams.

The nuts and the bolts:

But how easy are each to use? Both Teams and Zoom give users the option to join via the browser rather than downloading. This means that you can just send them an invitation, they click on the invitation, and the application will open up automatically. Easy!

User Interface 

New users may find Teams more complicated to use than Zoom since it is part of Microsoft’s much larger universe of productivity, collaboration, and communication tools. There is an initial learning curve because of the many ways Teams integrates with other Office apps. That said, the integrations are intuitive, and their usefulness outweighs the required learning. The Zoom video conference controls are similarly simple and user-friendly.

Microsoft Teams and Zoom share many of the same features. Both providers offer:

  • Screen and app sharing
  • Whiteboards
  • Chat functions
  • Voice calling
  • Customized backgrounds
  • Breakout rooms
  • Meeting recordings

*Teams has recently increased to 300 people

Pricing:

Both Teams and Zoom have free and paid versions. Microsoft offers a number of different pricing tiers for Teams, some of which come with varying degrees of access to other Office365 apps

The main differences between free and paid versions are meeting duration limits, participant capacity, file storage and the Microsoft apps you gain access to with each plan

Free plans:

  • Zoom gives its free users just 40 minutes for group meetings but up to 30 hours for one-to-one sessions.
  • Microsoft teams: Microsoft Team users on the free plan are limited to 60-minute meetings.

Paid plans:

Zoom’s paid plans:

  • Meetings can last up to 30 hours
  • Capacity of 1,000 max participants

Microsoft Teams:

  • Caps meeting duration at 24 hours.
  • 300 max meeting participant allowance.

File storage varies by provider plan; Zoom’s top plan offers unlimited file storage, while Microsoft Team caps storage at 1 TB per organisation and 10 GB per license.

So who is the winner on the day?

As you can see, Microsoft Teams and Zoom are both highly intuitive, very comparable platforms, which can be useful in different situations.

Teams also offers so many other benefits beyond just video conferencing including

  • Teams and Channels 
  • File storage within SharePoint Integration 
  • Audio Conferencing 
  • Security and Privacy 

Every business has its own particular requirements, and we are highly trained at matching your business with the best platforms and technology just for you. Reach out to us here, and we will help you out.

 

Cyber Insurance – Do you need it?

Cyber Security is a very real threat to businesses in New Zealand these days. Here we look at Cyber Insurance, what it is, what the laws are, and why you need it.

Why do you need Cyber Insurance?

Cyber attacks on businesses in Northland are increasing in both sophistication and frequency.

High profile companies like Air New Zealand partner Travelex, Fisher & Paykel Appliances, Toll Group, Garmin, Canon, Honda, BlueScope Steel, Lion, transport giant Toll Group, Twitter, MetService and most recently even the NZX, are just some of the organisations to have been targeted by cyber criminals.

However it is not just the big companies, many small businesses here in Northland are also being targeted.

It really is a matter of ‘when not if’.

What is Cyber insurance?

Cyber insurance is designed to fill the gap that traditional insurance policies don’t cover, minimising the impact of cyber incidents by providing cover for your own loss and third party costs. It provides your business with a structured crisis response plan and assists with returning to ‘business as usual’.

Won’t my general liability policy cover cyber liability?

General liability insurance covers bodily injuries and property damage resulting from your products, services or operations. Cyber insurance is often excluded from a general liability policy.

It pays to check your current policies and ask questions. You may find that your other business cover won’t respond to a cyber or data breach claim.

The law has changed:

The new Privacy Act 2020 which came into effect on 1 December 2020 means that all businesses now have legal requirements surrounding

The new Act requires mandatory data breach reporting if it’s reasonable to believe that the breach would cause serious harm to an individual. For example: If you’re engaging with a service provider to hold your clients’ personal data, for example a cloud-based CRM system, you remain responsible for the security and use of that personal information. If a Cyber breach were to occur, you would be held liable.

What does Cyber Insurance cover?

Ensuring business continuity and safeguarding your business from Business Interruption will enable you to return to the same financial position you were in before a Cyber event.

  • The benefits of Cyber Insurance will depend on the type of policy you take out but can include:
  • Access to a dedicated and experienced team of experts if an attack occurs
  • Protection from loss where you are legally liable to others
  • Cover for your financial loss if your business is interrupted due to a Cyber event.

Things to look out for in your Cyber Insurance policy:

  • Business Interruption: Look for a policy that covers the costs of any business interruption as you can lose time and money trying to get your business back up and running after a cyber attack.
  • Hacker Theft Cover: A plan that covers compensation for loss incurred, including theft or destruction of stored data, hardware, or cyber extortion from employees.
  • Restoration costs: Compensation for expenses incurred to research, replace, restore, or recollect digital assets during the period of restoration.
  • Public Relations: Reimbursement for any costs involved with public relations.
  • Network Extortion: Indemnity for the amount paid to avoid, defend, preclude or resolve a network extortion attempt
  • Data Forensic Expenses: Costs incurred to investigate, examine and analyse a computer network
  • Third-Party Liability: Indemnity for the sums claimed and incurred defending claims in relation to alleged privacy breaches, network security wrongful acts or media and social media wrongful acts.

What is the likely cost of Cyber Insurance?

Like most insurance, premiums vary by insurer, the type of cover selected and your risk profile. As an estimate a policy with $100,000 cover could cost as little as $600 per annum.

All businesses need a security plan to protect their business and they should consider a Cyber Insurance policy as an essential part of this plan.

What else can you do in the war against Cybercrime?

There are basic things that you can do to ensure good Cyber security. In this recent blog we share some top tips for your company.

Top tips to avoid cyber security threats:

CERT NZ has a number of useful and practical resources for businesses on keeping systems and data safe from cyber security attacks, including cyber security risk assessments for business, cyber security awareness for staff, phishing scams and your business and protecting your business online.

CERT NZ offers the following tips for simple, practical steps for businesses:

1. Install software updates

2. Implement two-factor authentication (2FA)

3. Back up your data

4. Set up logs

5. Create a plan for when things go wrong

6. Update your default credentials

7. Choose the right cloud services for your business

8. Only collect the data you really need

9. Secure your devices

10. Secure your network

11. Manually check financial details

So in Summary….

Cyber Security is a very real issue facing business owners these days. If you would like to discuss your individual needs, we provide security assessments to ensure that your business has the best protection.

Please feel free to reach out to us at support@ultrait.nz