When stay-at-home orders were issued in March, many individuals and organizations began using online communication tools such as Zoom. It has been reported that over 90,000 educational institutions turned to Zoom as their main provider of virtual education.
Their video conferencing software has come under scrutiny recently because of security breaches, such as 3rd parties entering Zoom meetings and displaying inappropriate content. On March 31st, security researchers revealed serious flaws in the Zoom application and as of April 1st, those were resolved. Additionally, Zoom’s IOS (Apple) app had provided personal data to Facebook, often without the knowledge of the user. This reporting has been removed from the Zoom app.
Since Zoom is a very useful and inexpensive tool that many are using, here are our suggestions for using it safely:
• Password protect all meetings.
• Disable attendee’s ability to: share files, send text chats & access annotation tools unless given specific permissions by the host.
• Use Zoom’s Waiting Room function, which allows the host to manually control entry into the session.
• Do not share Zoom links on public platforms such as social media.
• If a recording is needed, do not record sessions to Zoom’s cloud. Save the session locally and upload as an unlisted YouTube video.
• Zoom meetings should take place on private networks (i.e. on home networks) due to a lack of end-to-end encryption.
With these measures in place, Zoom can be a safe, easy to use, and productive tool to keep us connected during this difficult time.
