UPDATE ZOOM - Guidelines As Per NITA-U Advisory

By Support Team

As ZOOM continues to be the go-to platform for video conferencing and meetings. Friends, families, business entities, government organizations world over are increasing using it. ZOOM went public last year and now that are surely on the spotlight. Being in the spotlight has attracted both the good and the bad. For the good, people are able to connect and conduct critical meetings or even have classes. For the bad, hackers are doing whatever it takes to frustrate the service.

Today NITA-U released guidelines that we should follow to protect privacy and also to enable a smooth use of the service.

GUIDELINES

1.  ALWAYS KEEP YOUR SOFTWARE UP TO DATE

Vulnerabilities in applications are generally fixed by releasing newer versions of the applications. We highly recommend that your make sure your ZOOM application is updated(patched) to lower any possibilities of being compromised.

Open zoom desktop App. Click on the down arrow to the right of your username. From the drop down menu click on Check for updates. Download the latest version and then re-open zoom.
On your phone make sure you go to Google PLAY STORE(Android Users) or App store for the (iOS) users. Look for the Zoom application and click update.

2. NEVER SHARE YOUR PERSONAL MEETING ID

When scheduling a meeting, chose the ‘Generate Automatically’ option under the Meeting ID feature. Do not use a personal ID, allow ZOOM to generate for you automatically.

Every personal Meeting ID is unique so they can be used by hackers during targeted attacks.

3. YOUR MEETING SHOULD ALWAYS BE PASSWORD PROTECTED.

Whenever there is a new meeting, always set a password.
Do not embed the password in the meeting link and always require password for participants joining by phone.
Always tick the ‘Require meeting password’ to activate the option under the Password feature when scheduling your next meeting.

4. ALWAYS SHARE THE MEETING DETAILS SECURELY

You only need to use email to share the link, avoid using whatsapp, facebook, twitter or any other social forum. Preferably use a work mail or an email like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail (make sure they have two factor authentication activated). Also avoid taking pictures of active zoom meetings and posting them online since this will reveal information about the meeting.

5.USE A MEETING WAITING ROOM ALL THE TIME

The purpose for the waiting room allows the host to screen everyone entering the meeting to ensure no one uninvited can get in. Find this feature under the advanced options when scheduling your next meeting. To make use of this feature, tick the ‘enable waiting room’ option.

6. LOCK THE MEETING TO RESTRICT JOINING

The host of the meeting should always lock the meeting once all participants have joined so no new participants can join the meeting even if they have the meeting ID and password.
To have that feature, you must update to the latest Zoom version, click security at the bottom of your Zoom window and there you will see the Lock Meeting option.

7. BEWARE OF PHISHING

We all know that clicking links anyhow can open you up to either the legitimate site or a fake site.
So always be careful when clicking on any meeting invite links to avoid being led to a malicious site to download malware or enter details.
Always copy the meeting ID from the link provided and enter it in the official application to join. You can as well hover your mouse over the meeting to make sure the link includes the zoom.us domain within it.

8. SCREEN SHARING SHOULD BE LIMITED TO THE HOST

The host should be the only one allowed to share content during the meetings. Click the up-arrow next to Share Screen, select Advanced Sharing, under Who can share, Click only Host.

9. REQUIRE REGISTRATION

For participants to be part of the meeting, they should register with the email, name and have ZOOM accounts.

10. DISABLE AUTOMATIC RECORDING

We all know that when a word goes out, it can not come back. Recordings can go on without your notice and since many are trigger happy to share, you won't know what has been shared without due diligence. So disable automatic recording when scheduling a meeting, uncheck "Automatically record meeting" option.