Are you still relying on Flash?

 

You may never even have heard of Flash Player, but if you have ever watched (or recorded) video on the web, chances are you’ll have used Flash Player.

 

In the past, Flash was one of the cornerstones of the web, allowing rich interactive content and ubiquitous across 98% of devices. Born at the dawn of the web in 1996 it became the standard for web based video, particularly with the advent of You Tube in 2005.

So what exactly is Flash?

 

Adobe Flash is a software platform that must be downloaded and installed in your browser. It has the ability to run video, animation and games inside of Web pages by running complex code in your browser. However, the very thing that made it popular is also it’s achilles heel – this code can be exploited for malicious purposes.

Why is Flash a problem?

 

Computer code written in Flash can directly access the memory on your computer, which is just inviting attacks, or “exploits,” says Chase Cunningham, a cyberthreat expert at security company FireHost. “Anytime a site is able to access your computer’s memory, it’s able to make changes on the local machine itself [your PC]. That’s when you run into exploits.”

Adobe have long been forced into issuing critical security updates – a quick internet search on “security problems with Flash” only scratches the surface. If you work for a security conscious enterprise, this is the sort of thing that gives your IT guys sleepless nights. There’s a reason why they lock down browsers and restrict what you can install.

New vulnerabilities are being discovered constantly, and this list provides up to date details.

Let’s not even mention how much it can slow down your computer or drain battery.

What’s happening now?

 

Since the inception of the iPhone, Apple have blocked Flash, with Google soon following this trend on Android.

 

We have now reached a turning point where the main browsers are turning off Flash by default. Safari, Internet Explorer and Firefox, which require users to explicitly download the Flash plugin now require users to grant permission for it to run.

 

Google Chrome, where historically Flash has been embedded dropped support in January 2017, for all but the 10 most popular sites including YouTube and Facebook.

 

This all has security implications on how you use your Video Interviewing Software within a corporate setting – but also spare a thought for your candidates. Chances are if you need to ask them to download and enable Flash (with a big warning screen) it’s going to put some people off completing their interview.

Is there a better way?

 

The legacy video interviewing platforms rely on Flash to record and play video in the browser.

Fortunately, Shine has been built from the ground up using modern best practices, using cutting edge streaming technology built upon HTML5 with no Flash in sight. This is less likely to be blocked by big corporate firewalls and security settings, and giving confidence to both your users, internal security team and of course candidates.

Couple this with the fact that Shine is fully hosted in ISO 27001 certified data centres in the UK (Our CEO is actually an invited member of the UK Advisory Board for Microsoft Azure so we know what we are doing), and you can be confident that Shine offers the most secure and reliable Video Interviewing Platform available.