I was sharing a horrific incident with one of my friends recently. Last week I was on a Zoom Meeting with a professional group of about 28 people, and about 30 minutes into the meeting we were Zoom Bombed. I cannot describe the depravity of what we all saw without compromising my own professionalism. Suffice to say it made me totally sick, and I went into shock for several hours. The meeting host had taken precautions to avoid it, but they were insufficient.
Since I use Zoom a LOT these days, I studied up on the several layers of protection and will use these in the future. My friend suggested that I document the things I have learned in a blog. These things are all available from Zoom, but if I can spare just one person from going through what I did, it will be worth it.
Here are some of the tips I learned. If I have any of this incorrect, then let me know.
Use Registration
You can specify that only people who have registered can enter the meeting. That will prevent a random hacker from entering your meeting, but you need to be careful that someone intent on being disruptive does not register and come into the meeting by legal means.
Know the people in your meeting
If you are running a meeting with strangers who you do not know, recognize the risk you are taking. There are some very warped people in this world.
Enable the Waiting Room
This feature is located on the security icon on the host’s dashboard. When the waiting room is enabled the host has to allow each person to join the meeting consciously. If someone tries to crash the party, he will not get out of the waiting room. Of course, this protection will not work unless the host verifies that each participant belongs in the meeting.
Don’t allow participants to screen share
You can disable this protection once you know all the people there are safe and you have locked the room.
Lock the meeting once all participants have arrived
This feature will also keep predators from entering the meeting at all.
Remove any disruptive participants and lock them out
Participants can be ejected from the meeting by the host or the co-host.
Co-host cannot assign Breakout Rooms
Since you cannot enable the co-host to assign breakout rooms, if you use breakouts, you may want to reverse roles and let the meeting leader actually have the system consider him the co-host. That way, the second in command can assume the role of host and handle the breakouts.
I am sure there are other protections in the system that I have not yet discovered. If anyone reading this blog has any other tips, please comment on them so I can learn more helpful ideas.
Bob Whipple, MBA, CPLP, is a consultant, trainer, speaker, and author in the areas of leadership and trust. He is the author of: The Trust Factor: Advanced Leadership for Professionals, Understanding E-Body Language: Building Trust Online, and Leading with Trust is Like Sailing Downwind. Bob has many years as a senior executive with a Fortune 500 Company and with non-profit organizations
Maybe I’m just dim…or old, but I don’t get the Zoming. Does it rhyme with homing? Or does it want a B – Zombing? Great tips that I would like to pass along to a few folks, as I am attending a lot of Zoom gatherings nowadays, with some conducting meetings who should see this info.
Thanks I will see if I can make the correction real quick
Bob Whipple âThe Trust Ambassadorâ
585-392-7763