Zoom’s faced heat for security in the past. And I’ve covered most of the company’s recent mishaps. Like this one. And this one. Though Zoom’s always acknowledged its security shortcomings as they arise, and to its credit, remedied the situation. Today, Zoom’s taking a more proactive approach with the release of ‘Meeting Rooms,’ a feature that adds a layer of security to meetings against intruders.
The new feature acts as a virtual waiting space that prevents anyone from joining a meeting before the host admits them, according to Zoom. Available via Zoom Meetings, meeting hosts can customize the title, logo, and message that appear in their ‘Waiting Rooms,’ letting participants know they’re in the right meeting and will be added to the call shortly. Zoom said, meeting owners can even send personalized messages to those in waiting to their desktop or mobile device.
How to Enable Waiting Rooms by Zoom?
It takes about sixty seconds to set up, and here’s how to enable’ Waiting Rooms’ by Zoom:
- Sign in to your Zoom Meetings account and head to the settings tab
- Next, click on the ‘In Meeting’ option, a part of Zoom’s advanced settings
- Then, perform a search or scroll to locate the option to enable ‘Waiting Rooms’
- Toggle the button next to the waiting room to enable the feature
- After the feature is enabled, you can send all participants to ‘Waiting Rooms’ or send external accounts to a Zoom Waiting Room. The same is possible for internal participants so they can admit guests from the waiting room if the host is running late
Once you enable the feature, ‘Waiting Rooms’ will apply to all future Zoom meetings.
Securing Your Company and its Employees
Collaborations and unified communications vendors like RingCentral have released comparable safety features, giving the company’s systems an upper-hand when it comes to combating unwanted meeting attendees from snooping.
There are dozens of vendors in the landscape, with a variety of security features, however. Consequently, it can be difficult to know if the system you use is actually secure or if employees use it responsibly. So, you should consider a few key points when evaluating whether or not the video conferencing system you use is, in fact, secure.
Make sure the system is encrypted. If it is not, ditch it and find another one because there’s fairly good and free software out there with basic encryption. If you do not have a safe use policy, write one. Creating a policy, and enforcing it will present employees (both traditional and remote) with a model as to how to join video meetings over unsecured WiFi and devices, for instance.
After last year brought forth a rise in collaboration and video conferencing security scares, Zoom hopes to rebound this year, especially if it wants to remain an industry leader. It will take the release of innovative features designed with users in mind, and nothing short of that. Security is not something users are willing to compromise on if we learned anything in 2019.
