With classes online, Zoom is a popular tool for remote learning, teaching, and collaboration at Texas State. You might have heard of incidents of “Zoom bombing” from other universities that also use the software. “Zoom bombing” occurs when disruptive individuals join your meeting and use the in-meeting tools in Zoom to spread malicious files or inappropriate content.
There are multiple features that can be enabled to make your Zoom meetings more secure. We wanted to share these features with you, so you don’t have to worry about any disruptions. Be sure to adjust your Zoom settings before your meeting.
Randomly Generated Meeting ID/ Password
You can make the meeting more secure by avoiding using your Personal Meeting ID to host public events. Your PMI is basically one continuous meeting and you don’t want random people crashing your personal virtual space. You can instead create a randomly generated Meeting ID that is a one-time code to join a Zoom meeting or you can create a password to join the meeting.
Waiting Room
Zoom also lets the host of the meeting enable a waiting room feature. This feature prevents users from entering the meeting without first being admitted by the host, preventing unwanted participants from entering the Zoom call.
Lock the Zoom call
Zoom also has the functionality to lock a Zoom meeting. Locking a Zoom meeting is something you would enable after all participants are in the Zoom. It disables the functionality for anyone else to join the Zoom meeting and prevents disruptive individuals from joining.
Disable participants functionality
In the event an individual is being disruptive, the host of a Zoom meeting has the ability to disable participants’ video, chat functionality, and remove people from the meeting.
Make sure your Zoom meetings are secure using these features. For more information on making your Zoom secure, checkout this article posted on Zoom’s blog.
Cedrik Chavez is marketing and communications specialist student employee in the IT Marketing and Communications office.
