This week the BBC reported that a university Zoom meeting was hijacked.
Inappropriate images were shared and offensive comments made using the chat facility. Evidently the hijackers were removed from the meeting but rejoined several times as the meeting ID and password has been widely shared.
Zoom has a number of important facilities to help protect against this type of incident, so how can we protect our Zoom meetings? It can depend on the situation, but I would offer some general guidelines based on a lot of experience, both work and personal:
Always:
- Enable the waiting room
- Assign a passcode
- Only allow the host to share screens
- Lock the meeting once it has started
- Keep the meeting ID and passcode from being publicly shared
Consider:
- Enforcing advanced registration
- Closing registrations some time before the event
- Turning off the chat facility
- Stopping participants from unmuting themselves
- Stopping participants from sharing video
- Having a moderator (co-host) who can monitor and react to situations quickly
- Using the (paid-for) Zoom webinar facility if you need more control
Don’t forget that as a last resort you can now suspend all participant activities, and optionally report the incident to Zoom.
Since it will depend on your specific situation, and often you will need to balance security and convenience, let me know if you would like to chat through specifics or to see a demo of the Zoom webinar option.
If you would like to talk more about this, and our own experiences, why not use a free 20-minute insight call – you can book yours now here.