How to Make Your Zoom Meetings More Secure

The security and privacy of Zoom is a hot topic as more businesses, schools, and other organizations use the video meeting client for professional, educational, and private purposes. We outline several settings and features you can enable to improve the security of your meetings.

First, here are some basic settings you should implement for all of your meetings:

User/ Meeting Settings You Can Implement

1. Don’t use your Personal Meeting ID

Rather than reuse the Personal Meeting ID Zoom generates for your account, elect to have Zoom create a new, random ID for each meeting. This decreases the likelihood of someone learning your Personal Meeting ID and joining meetings without an invitation.

2. Password Protect Your Meetings

In the settings, you can choose to require a password when scheduling new meetings and can also require a password for instant meetings. This generates a numerical password invited attendees will have to enter prior to joining.

3. Securely Share Meeting IDs and Passwords

Don’t post Meeting details on social media, websites, or any other publicly accessible locations. Similarly, do not share photos of meetings in progress online if any meeting details or participant information is visible.

4. Update, Update, Update

As with any system, device, app or service, it is vitally important to make sure you are using the latest version of the Zoom application on all of your devices. 

5. Enable the Waiting Room Feature

The Waiting Room feature allows the host to verify participants and grant them access to the meeting to ensure only invited guests attend.

6. Manage Participants

As the Host, you can control participant camera and mute options. You can restrict screensharing capabilities without Host approval. You can also disable the feature to ‘allow removed participants to rejoin.’

Zoom Released an Update on April 8 Featuring Several Security-related Elements

The update deployed on April 8 included several security-related adjustments. Here are some of the highlights:

Added ‘Security’ Toolbar for Hosts in the Meeting

Hosts can now access the settings related to security in one menu within the meeting. You can enable the Waiting Room feature mentioned above, as well as ‘Lock the meeting’ which, when enabled, prevents anyone else from joining the in-progress meeting. You can also manage participants by designating whether they can share their screens, chat, or change their display name.

The Removal of the Meeting ID Displaying on a Meeting Window

In the event that someone shares a screenshot or photo of the meeting window, the Meeting ID will no longer be displayed on the window. This will prevent uninvited users from joining meetings by entering the Meeting ID.

File Transfers are Temporarily Disabled

They have disabled the ability to do third-party file transfers in Meetings and Chat. They have also disabled clickable URLs within meeting chat. They have indicated that this may be enabled at a later date.

Join Before Hosts Email Notifications Disabled

Meeting Hosts will no longer receive an email notifying them when participants are waiting for the host to join.