Zoom has been improving the security of its video conferencing platform since April 2020, hoping to combat unwanted meeting disruptions and to secure its technology which exploded in popularity due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Its seen the likes of Zoombombing, and other security issues along the way. It has enabled a myriad of security features designed to ensure meeting anonymity, as a result.
In keeping with that trend, Zoom recently released more security features to help users remove and report disruptive users. Now, Zoom users can access the “Suspend Participant Activities” and “Report by Participants” features. Both features are available for Zoom desktop for Mac, PC, Linux, and mobile app users, and there is support for the web client and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), said to be on the way later this year. Let’s take a look at what Zoom users can now do to even further shield themselves from the potential of meeting disruptions.
Suspend Participant Activities
This is fresh to the Zoom video conferencing platform and enables hosts as well as co-hosts to pause meetings temporarily. They can then remove disruptive users and notify Zoom’s Trust & Safety team about the incident. According to a statement by Zoom, once the meeting is paused, video, audio, in-meeting chat, screen sharing, and recording all stop. Breakout rooms also end.
“Once the meeting owner reports the user, they can re-enable the features they would like to use”
Using the ‘Suspend Participant Activities’ feature is easy, and meeting hosts can do so via the security icon located within the Zoom client. Head there, click Suspend Participant Activities, then confirm the selection once more by clicking “Suspend.” Using the ‘Report by Participants’ feature, participants can report a disruptive user from the Zoom client from the security icon in the top-lefthand corner.
There is even a new feature that identifies at-risk meetings, one called the ‘At Risk Meeting Notifier.’ The functionality scours public social media posts along with other online public resources for Zoom meeting links to help reduce the risk of a stranger joining your next meeting.
“When it finds publicly-posted meeting information that indicates a given meeting may be at high risk of getting disrupted, Zoom notifies account owners and admins by email”
Zoom has made an effort to ensure the privacy and security of its users on a global scale, and that is apparent from the company’s most recent feature set release. In addition, the company seems to have provided a great deal more transparency into its processes since it announced it would take on security as its top priority earlier this year.
These latest updates should help to make users feel more comfortable with security when using Zoom and help the company retain the trust of its loyal user-base that keeps expanding as the year progresses. At this year’s Zoomtopia virtual event the video conferencing giant launched a lot of other features aimed at improving the platform’s overall experience like the introduction of Zapps and the Zoom Instant SDK.
