Securing Zoom Meetings - Everything You Need To Know

Today, what we're going to be talking about is Zoom. Odds are, you've been on Zoom lately. Zoom's own reporting numbers say that in December of 2019, they had 10 million users. As of last month, they had 200 million users. While there's been a number of security concerns around Zoom, I do have to applaud them that they've done an excellent job identifying those issues and shoring them up as quickly as possible. What I want to do today is I want to show you how to schedule a secure Zoom meeting and do the best you can at protecting yourself from Zoombombing, from inadvertently sharing information, that sort of thing. Let's get started

Configuring Your Zoom Settings for Secure Meetings

What you see here is the Zoom interface. This is on a Mac; it's primarily the same on a PC. The option should be the same for you. But what we're going to do is we're going to schedule a meeting. Here are your default options, and what we want to do is talk through each of these. First thing to note is if you do have a recurring, say, a weekly meeting, and you choose recurring meeting, the meeting ID that is generated is persistent. Even though it's set for that time that you set, anyone can jump into that meeting at any time if they have the proper information; be aware of that. The next thing you'll notice is the meeting ID: Generate Automatically or Use Your Personal Meeting ID. I recommend never using your personal meeting ID because if that is out there, it's like the first half of your password. The reason that people are getting Zoombombed is because they use their personal meeting ID and they somehow either inadvertently share that or they don't have a password and somebody guesses their way in. If you generate it automatically, the risk is much less.

Taking Advantage of Zoom’s Advanced Settings

Next is the most important part—and kudos to Zoom. This was not an option that was automatically enabled last week, but they have enabled it since then. It's requiring a meeting password. I would recommend you to turn this on. You could create a three character password, a four character password, six—whatever you would like. Just having a password for that meeting is going to make it exponentially more secure and will pretty much eliminate the threat of somebody joining with you not wanting that to happen.

The next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to skip down to the very bottom here to advanced options, and I want to talk about these. Number one, you have the option of a waiting room. This would be for a larger event, maybe something that you don't know all the participants, and by enabling a waiting room, what happens is when somebody joins, the host has to allow them into the meeting before they're able to get in. Now, this is largely a good thing, but there's one issue with this. If you're running the meeting and, for whatever reason, you're not doing it from your computer—say you've done it from your phone and you don't know how to set yourself as the host—you're going to have a bunch of people waiting for the meeting that can’t actually join it. Same issue with this: Enable join before host. I actually prefer to check this. And the reason is because it allows people to jump in and start talking without me having to set it up. If I have any technical difficulties, the meeting can get started. Depending on who you're meeting with, if it's multiple clients, if it's vendors, if it's a situation where you don't want them talking before you, definitely just don't check that box. But, it does make it much easier. I can't tell you how many Zoom meetings I've been on where I've sat there waiting for 5, 10 minutes while the host tries to figure out how to get people into the meeting. Take that into consideration with both of those. I can tell you, the critical aspect here is the meeting password. If you have a meeting password enabled, the concern about somebody Zoombombing you (which may be the reason why you do want to check these boxes) is no longer a concern. Normally, honestly, how I set it up is I set up a password, I disable the waiting room, and I enable join before host. That makes it the most seamless experience for my users, and I've never had somebody log in on me unexpectedly with that set. 

Final Thoughts on Securing Your Zoom Meetings

Those would be my recommendations for Zoom. If you have any questions about this, definitely reach out to your I.T. provider, reach out to Element—somebody should be able to help you out. Zoom is going to be a big part of our lives until this all settles down; so, take that into consideration. We really do appreciate all the great feedback we've been getting about these weekly cybersecurity tips. If you have any other ideas, things that you want to hear about, don't hesitate to add it to the comments or reach out and let us know. Stay healthy, stay safe.

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