10 BEST Ways To Secure Zoom Meetings

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, businesses worldwide are shifting from the traditional work-at-office set up to working from home. Zoom, a video conferencing application gained popularity due to its ability to connect a distributed workforce and let them work in a single environment. However, the developers were not fully prepared to deal with such a sudden hike in usage.Here are 10 best ways to secure zoom meetings

In today’s digital era, technology plays a prominent role in finance, production, healthcare, and a lot more such as the Zoom application, which is used by professionals and students alike to work from home and join live classes despite the COVID-19 crisis. Zoom is a cloud-based peer-to-peer platform for distance education, teleconferencing, telecommuting, and social relations using online chat services and video telephony.

But ways to secure your Zoom meetings should be explored since the platform was attacked by malicious intruders recently. Users have been questioning, “Are Zoom meetings secure?” In response, the company has developed steps to secure Zoom meetings like automatically enabling virtual waiting rooms and authentication passwords etc.

10 Ways To Secure Zoom Meetings

Even though Zoom developers have added extra authentication and access verification methods, such features constraint the ease of flexibility with which users can access the services. Therefore, this article gives some tips for secure Zoom meetings.

1. Keep up to date:

Every application comes with some vulnerability or loophole, and Zoom is no different. To exemplify, there had been several complaints by Zoom users regarding uninvited guests joining in their conference and tarnishing the reputation of their institutions. Fortunately, Zoom has fixed some significant drawbacks within their system, and it is therefore always advisable to have the latest version of the Zoom application.

2. Sharing of password securely to secure zoom meetings:

Zoom users often have difficulties in sharing authentication credentials securely, and this is in contrast to the whole concept of having passwords. Cybersecurity officials have warned clients against posting the 9-digit meeting ID, passwords of meetings or sharing pictures from the conference in public forums. It is also recommended to use a multi-factor authentication technique to strengthen security and avoid intruders.

3. Remove disruptive participants from the meetings:

Disruptive users can be removed from the session using the Manage participants section at the bottom of the Zoom application window. Technically, the host of the meeting has the authority to remove such users from meetings.

4. Lock your meetings down:

Locking down the meeting after all the participants have joined the session is an intelligent decision to avoid intrusions by unrelated users who sign in using publicly available credentials. Such limitations can be set up once the intended participants have started the session and also, in online classes, such barriers can be used against latecomers in real life.

5. Using waiting rooms:

This is a powerful up-gradation by the Zoom development team to cope with attackers who try to thwart the normal flow of operations. In this case, the host can verify the identity of participants before a meeting begins and then add or reject the participant in a session. This has been successfully executed for the screening of participants before online interviews.

6. Avoid file-sharing to secure zoom meetings:

Contents within a file can be misused when unauthorized members get access to sensitive information shared during confidential meetings. Such kinds of tampering can be handled by sharing data using secure cloud-based services such as Google Drive, Amazon Drive and iCloud, among others.

7. Disable participant screen sharing:

Another way to avoid unwanted content to spread between participants is to disable their screen sharing feature, which can be controlled by the host. This step aids the host to let the members attend conferences without any disturbances from unwanted attendees.

8. Beware of phishing to secure zoom meetings:

If attackers could gain access to meetings, it is the responsibility of members to be alert against phishing. Usually, victims enter their login credentials in websites forwarded by attackers who misuse their sensitive data.

9. Use work mail ID to register in Zoom:

Zoom application tends to consider details of members using the same domain name as belonging to one company. This causes user details to be available to other members participating in a meeting, and experts suggest using your work mail ID since, disclosing your job-related information to colleagues would not be a big deal.

10. Stay away from fake apps:

Since video conferencing platforms have been gaining popularity amid COVID-19, many users can fall victim to cybercrimes by signing up through fake websites for similar online chat services. These fraudulent applications will have almost identical web URLs and application interface, and thus, it is also advisable to sign up for Zoom through HTTPS link provided by the company.

Final Words

The Zoom platform is benefitting significantly due to the current work-from-home policies. Even though Zoom has been successful in dealing with significant vulnerabilities and recommends best practices to secure Zoom meetings still, it is exposed to hackers using social engineering and phishing. Such malicious attacks can only be avoided by the implementation of strict security measures from the participants of the meeting.