Securing and Managing Zoom Meetings
- Athena Tate (Unlicensed)
Hosting a successful Zoom meeting includes making sure you are aware of some of the limitations and challenges of holding a web conference. Knowing what features for securing and moderating meetings are available to you can also help your confidence in holding meetings that have few interruptions and run as smoothly as possible. The tips below can also help avert situations where uninvited participants share unacceptable content via screen or file sharing, or otherwise maliciously interrupt your meeting, a practice known as “Zoom-bombing”.
Before a meeting
Maintaining control over who is and is not allowed to join your meeting, also called “access control”, is the number one way to secure a web conference. The following tips will help you ensure that only those you want to meet with are allowed to join, and that they can only use the meeting tools necessary for that specific meeting.
Use a unique Meeting ID
Every Zoom meeting has a Meeting ID that identifies that specific meeting to your participants. Every Zoom user also has a Personal Meeting ID which is always the same - this can be useful if you always want to be available for a particular meeting, at the cost of some security. Using the same Meeting ID for each meeting (or a recurring set of meetings) increases the risk that someone could join a meeting they weren’t specifically invited to if they know the Meeting ID will always be the same. When creating a meeting, turn on the Generate Meeting ID option to create the meeting with a unique Meeting ID.
Require a Meeting Password
A meeting password prevents external participants from joining your meeting, even if they know the Meeting ID. By default, Zoom will automatically create a password for your meeting - but recurring meetings may use the same password if you create them together. Turning on this option offers additional security for meetings that are joined by Meeting ID and is highly recommended. Passwords are enabled by default for all licensed users in our organization.
Please Note: Meetings that are joined via direct link will not prompt for a password. See the section below for more information.
Share meeting links carefully
When sharing a meeting invitation through a Google Calendar invitation, by sharing the URL created during meeting scheduling, or by sending someone a meeting link using the Invite Participants button during a Zoom meeting, a unique URL is created that will link to only your specific meeting. This URL is not secure if someone outside of your intended participants receives it, or if someone you share it with decides to make it public. Because the URL generated includes both the Meeting ID and password in one link, anyone that has the link can join your meeting with one click.
To help reduce the chance of this happening, you can share only your Meeting ID and/or password separately, wait to share the URL or meeting password until you are ready to host the meeting, or use the additional options below to help prevent unintended participants from joining your meeting.
Manage how participants join
Zoom offers several ways to manage how meeting attendees can participate in a meeting:
Waiting room
The Waiting Room option will place all participants into a “waiting room” when they join your meeting, allowing you the opportunity to grant them entry to your main meeting room after you have identified them. You can also choose to remove unknown participants before they can communicate with others in your meeting. This can also be used to manage your participants' privacy so that you can have a meeting with limited participants, while allowing others to queue up to meet with you.
Authenticated users
Another option you can enable is the Only allow authenticated users to join which ensures that your participants have a Zoom account before they can join your meeting. This account does not need to be a paid account, but it does require that someone identify themselves and not join your meeting anonymously.
Join before host
When creating a meeting, you can disable the option Enable join before host which will allow participants who have your meeting information to join the meeting before you have started it. This can be helpful if you have a trusted group of participants who you would like to be able to communicate before you have joined, but disabling this option will ensure that you have started the meeting before others can join (and cause trouble). This is especially important for recurring meetings that use the same link, Meeting ID, and password - as anyone with this info could join your meeting at any time.
Set advanced meeting options
Some additional meeting options you can enable or disable to help control how your meeting will start are:
Mute participants on entry
You can auto-mute participants when they join, which can help avoid feedback and background noise, but also helps with crowd control and gives you more visibility over who is speaking.
Default participants video off
You can set participants video to start the meeting on or off. Starting with video off by default gives participants the ability to enable video only if they are comfortable, and gives you the opportunity to better account for who is broadcasting video in your meeting.
Set Screen Sharing to “Host Only”
By default, the college has set the Screen Sharing functionality for all users to default to “Host Only”, which means that only a meeting host can start screen sharing. A meeting host can enable or disable screen sharing for other participants during a meeting as needed.
Disallow removed participants from rejoining
By default, the college has set the Allow removed participants to rejoin option for all users to “Off”, which prevents someone from rejoining your meeting after you have chosen to remove them. This helps ensure that an unwanted participant can’t continually rejoin and interrupt a meeting.
During a meeting
There are a number of options and tools you can use during a meeting to maintain control over who is in the meeting, as well as responding to potential events that happen during a meeting.
Managing file transfers
By default, the college has disabled file transfers for all Zoom meetings to prevent the spread of malware or viruses. If you would like to enable file transfers in your zoom meetings, you can do so with the instructions below.
Managing Screen Sharing and Remote Desktop
By default, the college has set the Screen Sharing functionality for all users to default to “Host Only”, which means that only a meeting host can start screen sharing. A meeting host can enable or disable screen sharing for other participants during a meeting as needed.
Designate a co-host
You can assign a co-host when scheduling a meeting or during the meeting to grant them the same meeting controls that you have as a host, including muting or removing participants, controlling screen sharing, changing meeting settings, etc. This can be useful for a large meeting where additional support for moderation may be needed.
Managing participants
There are several tools you can use within a meeting to manage your participants, including the following:
Mute participants
Request that a participant unmutes
Stop a participant's video
Request that a participant starts their video
Prevent participants from screen sharing
Rename a participant
Put a participant on hold
Choose to play an enter or exit chime
Lock the meeting to prevent anyone new from joining
Place participants in waiting room or admit/remove participants from the waiting room (waiting room can only be enabled by the host)
See more information about all of these features here: