Keep your Zoom meetings secure

Here are our tips for keeping your Zoom meetings secure and free from Zoombombers. Keep in mind that many of these tips apply to other teleconferencing tools as well.

1. Generate a unique meeting ID.
   Using your personal ID for meetings is like having an open-door policy—anyone can pop in at any time.
2. Set a password for each meeting.
   Even if you have a unique meeting ID, an invited participant can still share your meeting ID with someone outside your organization. Adding a password to your meeting is one more layer of security you can add to keep interlopers out.
3. Allow signed-in users only.
   With this option, it won’t matter if Zoombombers have the meeting ID or even the password. This setting requires everyone to be signed in to Zoom using the email they were invited through.
4. Use the waiting room.
   With the waiting room, the meeting doesn’t start until the host . Attendees in the waiting room can’t communicate with each other.
   This gives you one additional layer of manual verification, before anyone can join your meeting.
5. Enable the chime
   when users join or leave the meeting. Besides giving you a reason to embarrass late arrivals, the chime ensures no one can join your meeting undetected.
6. lock the room once the meeting has begun. Once all expected attendees have joined, lock the meeting. It seems simple, but it’s another easy way to keep Zoombombing at bay.
7. Limit screen sharing.
   Before the meeting starts, you can restrict who can share their screen to just the host. And during the meeting, you can change this setting on the fly, in case a participant ends up needing to show something.
8. Many of these Zoom settings can be set to default. You can even further lock down settings for a particular group of users with access to sensitive information.

Remember, Zoombombing isn’t just embarrassing—it’s a big security risk. Sure, the Zoombombing incidents making headlines at the moment seem to be about trolling people more than anything else, but the potential for more serious abuse exists.

No matter which web conferencing software you use, take a moment to learn its settings and make smart choices about the data you share in your meetings. Do this, and you’ll have a safe and happy socially-distanced gathering each time you sign on.

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