Steps You Should Take to Make Sure Your Zoom Meetings Are Safe

During the pandemic, Zoom has quickly become one of the most popular pieces of software. While it has been actively used in the corporate world before the COVID-19 restrictions, the number of users doesn’t even compare to those Zoom experienced in 2020.

Because the app was designed mostly for business use, there have been some problems when it comes to the level of security. The main one had to do with the safety of meetings, as random people managed to get into conversations. In response, the company developed additional safety measures, so there are several steps you can take to protect yourself when using the app.

Enter a Password and an Exclusive Meeting ID

While you get a personal meeting ID in the app, using it every time for every meeting doesn’t add to your security in any way. The more you enter it, the more people will know it. For this reason, the company decided that you should use an exclusive generated ID as opposed to the personal one. The process should look like this:

• Click the ‘Schedule’ button in the app or ‘Schedule a meeting’ if you are using the web browser.
• Add descriptions regarding the event if you want to. Then, you should enter the time, date, and duration of the meeting.
• Open ‘Meeting ID’ and ensure that the ‘Generate Automatically’ option is chosen. In this way, a unique ID will be generated for the meeting as opposed to your personal one.
• At this stage, you can change a passcode or leave the one you got assigned.
• Next, it is always a good idea to enable ‘Waiting Room’ so you can see who wants to enter the meeting and decide if this is someone you need.
• Press on ‘Save’ and click ‘Copy the invitation’ so you can quickly send out the information to others.

Always Use a Waiting Room Feature

One of the most effective ways to prevent intruders from entering your conferences is to enable a waiting room feature.

The way it works is simple. When a certain person clicks on your link, they will not immediately become a participant, but rather will be asked to wait. At that moment, you will see a notification on your screen that someone wants to join. You can click on ‘View’ to see more information or you can approve them right away. Everyone who waits to enter will appear in a sidebar and you can send a message to a person, delete them from the waiting room or admit.

While dealing with the waiting room takes more effort, especially if you have a lot of people joining, it will ensure that you won’t see any unwanted faces during your meeting.

Use Additional Safety Precautions

To make things even more secure and convenient, you can use additional safety features.

For instance, if you see that everyone who needed to join the meeting is already there, you can click on ‘Security’ at the bottom of your screen and then choose ‘Lock Meeting.’ Even if someone has the password and meeting ID, they won’t be able to join.

If you host a meeting for a large audience, it is a good idea to disable the ‘Share Screen’ feature. This will prevent random people from disrupting the conference and you can enable this feature again if you need to at any moment during the chat.

In the case that someone misbehaves, you can either put them back in the waiting room by clicking on their icon. Or, you can remove them completely by going to the drop-down menu that will appear when you click on them and choose ‘Remove.’

Safety Always Comes First

As you can see, there are plenty of tools in the app to ensure that you don’t see random people popping up while you talk to your friends or coworkers. Have you already used any of these features? Share your Zoom experience and possibly any recommendations in the comments below.