6 Tips to Secure Your Zoom Meetings or Virtual Events

You’ve heard of photobombing, but are you familiar with Zoombombing? If you’re working from home, chances are you’ve used Zoom before. Zoom allows users to chat in video web conferences, making it a popular option for organizations that have been forced to go virtual. Unfortunately, using Zoom also comes with the risk of getting hacked, or “Zoombombed,” by unwelcome visitors. Luckily, there are ways to protect your privacy and your meetings. 

1 – Protect your Zoom meeting with a password

One of the easiest ways to ensure your meeting’s security is to password-protect it. The host of the meeting (the person who scheduled it) has the option to require a password before members are allowed into the chat room. The only people who will have the password are the ones you specifically invited.

2 – Do not share the Zoom meeting link on social media

Sharing your meeting link on Facebook or Twitter gives anyone the opportunity to hack your meeting. One University of Texas at Austin organization shared their Zoom link on their public Twitter account in an attempt to give their members easy access. As a result, their conference got hijacked by anonymous users shouting racist slurs at the group members.

3 – Utilize Zoom’s waiting rooms

The host can set up a waiting room, which is a landing page for members to stay while waiting for the host. The host can add text to the waiting room page to let users know they’re in the right spot, they just aren’t allowed into the meeting yet. The waiting room gives the host more control over who is allowed into the meeting. You can learn more about how to manage waiting rooms here.

4 – Lock your Zoom meeting

Once all of your participants are in the video conference, it’s a good idea to lock the meeting. This is a lot like locking your door to make sure burglars can’t get in. You can do this by clicking “Participants” at the bottom of the window, and then selecting “Lock Meeting.” This will keep any new members from joining the meeting, even if they have the meeting ID and password.

5 – Learn how to remove participants

If someone hijacks your meeting, there is an easy way to remove them. Click the “Participants” button at the bottom of the screen, and you will see every member in the conference call. Hover over the hijacker’s name and click “Remove.” Once they’re gone, lock the meeting so they can’t get back in.

6 – Mute audio and disable video

The meeting host has permission to disable anyone’s video or mute them. They can do this to all participants at once or only to certain disruptive guests. Selecting “Mute upon entry” in the meeting settings is useful for teleconferences with big groups so that the racket of everyone’s living rooms won’t drown out the host’s voice.