Are you concerned about having your Zoom meeting 'Zoombombed'?

Zoom is a popular video-conferencing app that so many people are now using for social, business and educational purposes - especially during the current Covid-19 crisis.

​Many of you may have seen reports of intruders who have been using Zoom’s screen-sharing feature to inundate meetings with graphic videos, pornography, and other content. In a particular report, the 'bomber' kept joining as a different attendee until the host had to end the meeting to stop the intrusion.

This type of intrusion has been termed 'Zoombombing'.

I know it has caused concern for many who are currently using Zoom, or are thinking about using Zoom – especially for business.

So, is this concern warranted, especially for those who rely on the confidentiality and security of their meetings and appointments on Zoom

It's all about security and privacy - make sure you meetings are set up correctly

The key issue that leaves meetings open to this sort of attack is a lack of awareness by the meeting organiser about how to ensure the security of the meeting.

​It is also often about the meeting’s details being known to those who might wish to cause some mayhem. 

In one of the reported cases, the Meeting ID for the meeting was shared publicly on social media - something that should never occur for business meetings and appointments to be held on Zoom.

Email phishing attacks have also been blamed for providing hackers access to private meetings. 

The good news is that there are several easy ways that you can ensure that your own meetings do not suffer from any unwanted intrusions.

Here’s a summary the practices and settings that need to be considered:
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• Don’t share Meeting ID’s on social media or anywhere that could be accessed by anyone other than the attendees.
• Don’t allow attendees to screen share their own screens without your permission
• Don’t use your Personal Meeting ID for meetings - allow Zoom to generate a random Meeting ID.
• If you have inadvertently given away your Personal Meeting ID, you can change it to a different ID.
• Set a meeting password that you can provide only to authorised attendees. (I create the meeting initially without sharing a password, then share it on the day with authorised attendees - just before the meeting.)
• Use a Waiting Room for your meeting, to control admission of those who join the meeting.
• Lock a meeting once it is started (if you are not expecting further attendees).
• Disable video and audio for attendees when they first join the session and only turn on once you have confirmed who they are
• Turn off Remote Control requests if that is not relevant to your business use of Zoom
• Force all attendees to have a Zoom account (ie they must be ’signed-in’ to Zoom to join the meeting)
• Stop meeting attendees from choosing to record the session (or ensure they have to ask for permission).
• Don’t store recordings in the cloud – store them locally. 

 
The question is then – where do you control all of the above settings? 

iTandCoffee has produced a guide that covers these settings, where to find them and what settings should you should apply to protect your meetings.

Those of you who are iTandCoffee Club members can download this information - just use the button below, and sign in with your Club login details.

​(Here's the link if you are interested in finding out more about the iTandCoffee Club.)

Guarding against Zoombombers

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Here are the upcoming classes about Zoom

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And here are our upcoming online classes