Zoom Video Conferencing - How to Secure your Zoom Meeting
For an in-depth look at securing Zoom meetings, see this document from Zoom: Best Practices for Securing Your Zoom Meetings
To avoid disruption from unwanted guests in Zoom meetings, we recommend a few simple ways to help secure and control your meeting room.
Appoint a Co-Host
A co-hosthas the same abilities as a meeting host, including the ability to block and remove participants. This can help you to avoid interruptions, especially in large meetings or presentations. Be sure the moderator is familiar with procedures for removing disruptive participants and for locking the room to prevent their return.
Your co-host should be watchful for guests who are using their video camera and microphones. Moderators should scroll down the list of video users as the meeting is in progress so they are aware of any disruptive activity.
Meeting Passwords
When you schedule a Zoom meeting, you will be required by default to set a meeting password. If you wish to remove the meeting password, you are required to enable the Waiting Room instead (see below).
For private meetings, setting a strong password is a recommended way to limit unwanted guests. This is especially recommended for any meetings where sensitive information may be discussed, but is generally a good practice.
While scheduling a meeting, under Meeting Options, check Require Meeting Password, then create a strong password. Participants will be asked for this password in order to join your meeting.
Disable "Join Before Host"
If you are scheduling a meeting where sensitive information will be discussed, we recommend leaving Enable join before host (found in the Meeting Options section while scheduling a meeting) turned OFF. See Zoom's Join Before Host help page for more information. This is the default setting for UNL accounts.
This feature can be convenient for allowing others to begin the meeting if you are not available to start it, or if you would like participants to be able to start early. However, with this option enabled unwelcome users will be able to connect and cannot be easily moderated. With this disabled, users will be presented with a "waiting for meeting to start" message when attempting to join early.
We recommend assigning an Alternative Host if you may not be able to start the meeting yourself.
Enable the Waiting Room Feature
The Waiting Room lets the host control when each participant joins the meeting. As the meeting host, you can admit attendees one by one, or hold all attendees in the waiting room and admit them all at once. This requires more work by the host, but only allows participants to join if you specifically admit them. See Zoom's Waiting Room help page for more information.
If you are creating a meeting with no meeting password, the Waiting Room feature must be turned on.
Meeting Security When Scheduling Zoom Meetings Using Your Outlook Calendar
Many users add Zoom meetings to their calendar or create Zoom meetings using the Zoom Outlook Plug-in. Note that the calendar entry may include the Zoom meeting password embedded in the meeting link.
If you have set up your calendar so that it is open for colleagues to view the details of your meetings, this can expose the password to anyone who views your calendar. We recommend making the calendar entry private or editing the entry to remove the Zoom meeting password.
Remove a Participant from a Zoom Meeting or Webinar
If you have already begun a session and find an unwanted attendee has joined:
- If the Participants panel is not visible, select Manage Participants at the bottom of the Zoom window.
- Next to the person you want to remove, select More.
- From the list that appears, select Remove.
Lock Your Session
The Zoom Host Controls allow the host or co-host to lock the meeting. Once all your attendees have joined:
- If the Participants panel is not visible, select Manage Participants at the bottom of the Zoom window.
- At the bottom of the Participants panel, select More.
- From the list that appears, select Lock Meeting.
Unlock the meeting following these same steps.
When a meeting is locked, no one can join, and hosts will NOT be alerted if anyone tries to join. It's best not to lock the meeting until everyone has joined. Use this feature carefully.
It is important to consider the security implications of the Zoom meetings that you set up. It is important to properly secure your meeting if there is any discussion of high-level data. In addition, if it is a video meeting it is important to secure the recording if there are minors involved and/or non-University of Wisconsin participants.
Another important consideration is to make sure that we are properly accounting for the participants in our meeting. If, despite these precautions, someone shows up in your meeting that you don't know, you should take it seriously, it is possible that these incidents may constitute a phishing attempt to obtain confidential information or access to University services.