Protecting the Security of Your Online Meetings

With online meetings now a permanent part of the business landscape, it’s important for people to take basic steps to protect the security of their virtual meetings and the information that is shared during those discussions.

Although reports of disruptions known as "Zoombombing" are less common, it’s still important to take measures to ensure your meeting attendees belong there - and will behave appropriately - to reduce the risk of unwanted interruptions or the theft of confidential customer or company information.

Companies have to take steps against meeting attendees displaying inappropriate images or videos or signing into meetings and quietly listening to (or recording) information they shouldn’t be accessing. Either scenario can harm your company or, at the very least, cause embarrassment if customers are attending a meeting that’s been disrupted.

Pre-Meeting Controls

One of the most effective ways to reduce the risk of unwanted disruption during your online meetings is restricting the number of people who can show up in the first place.

As a basic step, it’s important to avoid sharing meeting addresses or sign-in information on social media or other publicly available sites. If you’re inviting members of the public to your virtual meeting, it’s safer to create a publicly available registration page. As attendees sign up for your event, the meeting platform will send a confirmation email with the necessary log-in data.

In addition, requiring registration lets you know who’s expected to attend so you have a better sense of when to start the meeting as attendees show up.

Zoom and Microsoft’s Teams platform now require the use of attendee passwords in their default settings, which reduces the possibility of someone stumbling into a meeting by using automated tools to guess a meeting URL.

Similarly, your meeting platform’s waiting room can be a powerful way to reduce unauthorized attendees. You can see who’s waiting to be admitted, which allows you to block anyone you’re not expecting, or to check any user or device names you don’t recognize before letting that person into your meeting.

Another control that’s important to disable is the ability of attendees to join a meeting before the designated host. Although this can be slightly less convenient, it’s better for attendees to be waiting than for unwanted activity to occur before the host arrives.

You should also update your meeting software as recommended to have the latest security features and recommended settings.

In the Meeting

Once your meeting is underway, you can take a variety of measures to maintain a productive environment. One of the easiest steps is to block screen sharing unless someone needs to display slides, images or a document. Turning this capability off prevents an attendee from hijacking your meeting with offensive content.

In addition, assigning a co-host can help you share the administrative aspects of letting people into the meeting and muting people’s microphones that are conveying background noise. This lets you focus more on the topics being discussed during the meeting.

It’s also important to disable attendees’ ability to record the meeting directly to their devices. This step will eliminate the risk of someone recording and distributing confidential information you’d like to keep among the meeting participants.

Another helpful feature to disable is attendees’ ability to use videos as virtual backgrounds, because this feature has also been exploited to display offensive content during meetings.