Here, we\u2019ll introduce you to some of the latest Zoom security settings and show you how to secure Zoom meetings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to Secure Zoom Meetings in Your Zoom Security Settings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
If you are wondering whether the Zoom app is safe, we want to go ahead and say, \u201cyes! Zoom meetings are safe if you are aware of these Zoom security settings and how to leverage them.\u201d<\/em> So, here\u2019s what you need to know about how to secure zoom meetings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This Zoom security feature gives hosts the power to allow only trusted participants into their meetings. When you enable the waiting room feature, participants have to wait until the admin allows them to enter the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To set the waiting room feature by default for all your future meetings, open Zoom.us in your browser and log in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Important Note: If you\u2019re using Zoom Desktop App, click on the menu icon from the top-right corner and click on View More Settings<\/strong> at the bottom of the settings window (shown in the screenshot below). You\u2019ll be redirected to Zoom\u2019s website where you will see the options mentioned above. (Do this for all the next steps mentioned in this article if you are using Zoom desktop app).<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want to enable the Zoom waiting room for only one meeting, go to Schedule<\/strong> from the Zoom interface (app, browser, desktop client) and scroll down to the Security<\/strong> section where you will find Enable Waiting Room<\/strong> option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, whenever a new participant wants to join the meeting, you (the admin) will get the request. Only after you accept can the new person join the meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is one of the most basic yet effective ways to control who can join your Zoom meetings. However, there are two ways you can go about inviting people to your Zoom meeting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n A personal meeting ID is a 10-digit number that you can share with your participants. For PMI, a passcode is mandatory now. By default, Zoom creates a six-digit alphanumeric passcode for every Zoom meeting. However, you can make it stronger or change the passcode in the Zoom security settings by following the directions below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sending meeting links alone is an insecure way to host a meeting. That\u2019s because the default meeting URL has embedded passcodes. This means anyone with this URL can directly join the meeting without knowing the passcode. However, you now can disable this setting and make it mandatory for all the participants to input the passcode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To disable the embedding of the passcode into the URL:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Send this passcode to participants on their email instead of publishing it on insecure places like social media to ensure it doesn\u2019t get compromised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some people avoid the \u201cEnable waiting room\u201d feature when there are many participants in a chat as it distracts the admin every time someone new wants to join. Another Zoom security setting you can enable to avoid this issue is Lock Meeting<\/strong>. Once the clock reaches a specific time or once all the expected participants are present, you can lock the meeting to prevent anyone else from joining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once you start a meeting and notice that everyone has arrived, go to the Security <\/strong>tab at the bottom of the screen. There, you\u2019ll find the Lock Meeting<\/strong> option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s like some college professors tend to lock their classroom doors at the start of class to prevent tardy students from showing up late and interrupting the class. While this is bad news for latecomers, it\u2019s a great relief for meeting hosts who don\u2019t want to worry about unexpected \u201cguests\u201d crashing the meeting or sending a joining request in the middle of the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If someone starts misbehaving in the middle of the meeting, you can suspend all their activities immediately. This option will:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The best thing about this option is that you don\u2019t need to end the meeting and reschedule everything. This feature will simply pause the meeting to give you sufficient time to kick out the unwanted participant and resume the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To pause a meeting, go to the Security<\/strong> tab and click on Suspend Participant Activities<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After that, you can click on the Participants<\/strong> option, select the unwanted participants, click on the More<\/strong> fly-out menu, and select Remove<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To restart the meeting as the meeting host, unmute your audio and\/or start your video. Ask participants to enable their audio and video, too, if necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Screen sharing is one of the most convenient features that Zoom offers. But what if someone starts sharing the screen and displaying inappropriate content? Luckily, there\u2019s now a setting to avoid those issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In business meetings where the number of participants is limited and you know all of the people involved, the chance for such mischief is negligible. But when you have many unknown participants in the meeting, such as in online academic classes, open government meetings, or live entertainment events, you should consider limiting the screen sharing option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once the meeting starts, click on the Share Screen<\/strong> option from the menu at the bottom. Select the Advanced Sharing<\/strong> option. Here, you can choose:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another cool feature about Zoom is that it allows users to share files via chatroom. But when you are dealing with a large number of unknown participants, one of them might post malware or inappropriate content in the chatroom. But the good news is that you can easily restrict file sharing by taking the following steps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you don\u2019t want anyone else to share the files during the meeting, you can turn this feature off. If you decide to enable it, you\u2019ll get options to limit the file types and sizes that users can share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two-factor authentication adds another layer of Zoom security for organizations who want to make their employees\u2019 accounts more secure. (And what company doesn\u2019t want that?) The way 2FA works is that users will receive a secret one-time password either on their phone or an app once you enable this setting. This requires them to verify that they are who they claim to be because they have access to the registered device or app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To enable 2FA in your Zoom security settings, sign in to the Zoom dashboard:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you have a business account, you\u2019ll be able to enforce 2FA for all users\u2019 accounts or users that belong to a particular group or have predefined roles. Check out these detailed instructions on how to enable 2FA on Zoom<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Suppose you\u2019re a business or organization whose employees tend to share highly sensitive information via Zoom meetings. In that case, you can enable end-to-end (E2E) encryption<\/a> to add another layer of protection. To enable E2E encryption in your Zoom security settings:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Please note that you won\u2019t be able to access several key features<\/a> in the Zoom meetings as they don\u2019t work with E2E encryption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why<\/strong>: Zoom meetings are encrypted with 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). But the encryption occurs between Zoom client and Zoom\u2019s servers and not directly between two Zoom users\u2019 endpoints. In other words, any data transmitted between meeting participants reaches Zoom\u2019s servers first before being redirected to the intended participant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since Zoom\u2019s servers stored decryption keys, this means that if someone at Zoom wanted to access your information, they could have potentially decrypted and accessed what you thought was your end-to-end secured data. And considering that one of Zoom\u2019s past employees<\/a> was a Chinese spy, it\u2019s understandable why people still have trust issues with Zoom. Thankfully, though, the FTC required Zoom to change its security practices<\/a> as part of its settlement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With E2E encryption, your data will get end-to-end encryption, having direct communication between you and your clients, without Zoom\u2019s server being a mediator. That\u2019s why it is one of the most important Zoom security settings to protect your meeting data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We asked several industry leaders which Zoom security features they use and recommend to our readers. Here are their Zoom security tips and suggestions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Andreas Grant<\/strong>, who is a network engineer at networkshardware.com<\/a> and works with ISP security issues, shared one more Zoom security tip with us:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUse Zoom from a browser. The reason you should use it from a browser is that Zoom\u2019s encryption is questionable. And a site loaded on a browser has much stricter permissions than a Software program. Using it from a browser thus adds a security layer, which makes it much harder for any security breach in Zoom to make any damage.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Kevin Parker<\/strong>, a cybersecurity expert and the cofounder of vpnAlert<\/a>, recommends using password managers and proxy servers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUse a proxy server. Proxy servers add that extra layer of security to your device. You can access hardware and software versions, but I\u2019d recommend a hardware version in this case. Proxy servers hide your traffic footprint. Also, you can get a website to generate secure passwords for you. Once you\u2019ve done that, I\u2019d recommend using a password manager that is separate from your browser to store them.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n We asked Kristen Bolig<\/strong>, founder of security advice company SecurityNerd<\/a>, which Zoom security settings she recommends. She offers the following insights:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cZoom\u2019s long list of security vulnerabilities has proven to be a PR nightmare for the video conferencing giant. In response, Zoom rolled out many new features to <\/em>tighten its security. All users now benefit from full encryption and tools that help fight back against threats like Zoom bombers. You can now click \u2018Suspend Participant Activities\u2019 to block unknown participants who joined your meeting. You should always require passwords to join Zoom meetings. It\u2019s also a good idea to update your Zoom app to take advantage of Zoom\u2019s new security measures. I also recommend you set up two-factor authentication to protect your account from scammers.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Which features are important to address the Zoom safety issues? Here\u2019s what Jeremy Harrison<\/strong>, founder of Hustle Life<\/a>, has to say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere were instances of Zoombombings before, and it quickly got out of hand. But these have already been corrected, and it\u2019s reasonably safe to say that Zoom is secured. Here are a couple of things you can do: Generate a new ID for every meeting you launch using the options panel. This way, future sessions won\u2019t be compromised. Change settings so that each participant will need a password to access the meeting. Enable Zoom\u2019s \u2018Waiting Room\u2019 feature, which lets meeting hosts keep would-be participants in a digital queue until they approve them to join the session.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Zoom has a lot of great advantages:<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are a few of the reasons why Zoom became so famous during the global pandemic. People needed an easy-to-use platform for online classes, remote work, and socializing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s obvious that any company would find it overwhelming to deal with such a steep demand. But Zoom has done an impressive job identifying the security loopholes and introducing new Zoom security settings to prevent cyber attacks<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n1. Enable the Waiting Room Feature<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"Zoom](\"https:\/\/sectigostore.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/zoom-security-settings1.png\")
![\"Where](\"https:\/\/sectigostore.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/zoom-security-settings2.png\")
2. Require a Passcode or Link to Join<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
1. Give Invitees a Personal Meeting ID (PMI)<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
![\"How](\"https:\/\/sectigostore.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/zoom-personal-meeting-id.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n2. Send Meeting Links (URLs) as Invitations<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/sectigostore.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/zoom-one-click-join.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n3. Enable the \u2018Lock Meeting\u2019 Setting <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
4. Suspend Participant Activities<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/sectigostore.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/zoom-suspend-participant-activities.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/sectigostore.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/zoom-suspend-participant-activites2.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n5. Limit Screen Sharing<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/sectigostore.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/zoom-screen-sharing.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/sectigostore.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/zoom-sharing-settings.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n6. Limit File Sharing Capabilities<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/sectigostore.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/file-transfer-zoom-security-settings.png\"){kind=spacer}
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n7. Enable Two-factor Authentication<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bonus Tip<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/sectigostore.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/zoom-enable-end-to-end-encryption.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n4 Experts\u2019 Opinions on How to Secure Zoom Meetings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Wrapping Up on Zoom Security Settings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n