What is Zoom-bombing?

You may have heard this in the media, it is when an uninvited guess appears in a zoom meeting and shares unwanted material to everyone's screen. This usually occurs when people publicly share the zoom link (via social media), but some people are just trying to hack into meetings by guessing the meeting ID. (9 digit code).

Avoiding an unwanted experience is easily preventable with a few security measures.

Recommendations

Make sure meetings are password protected. The best way to ensure meetings can be accessed only when someone has the password is to ensure that Require a password for instant meetings is turned on in the user settings. - This setting has now been turned on for everyone and cannot be turned off.

Don't announce meetings on social media or other public outlets. Using Google Calendar, email and Google Classroom is a safe way to deliver the zoom links.

Utilise the Waiting Room to admit participants. This will prevent admittance of trolls should they have slipped through any defences - this has also been turned on for all by default

Carefully inspect the list of participants periodically, whenever possible. This can be done by the organiser or trusted participants. Any users who are unauthorised can be booted.

Carefully control screen sharing. The user settings allow organisers to set sharing settings by default. People who rarely need sharing should turn it off altogether by sliding the button to the right to off. In the event participants require screen sharing, the slider should be turned on and the setting for only the host to share should be turned on. Organisers should allow all participants to share screens only when the host knows and fully trusts everyone in a meeting.

Disable the Join Before Host setting so that organisers can control the meeting from its very start.

Lock a meeting, when possible, once it's underway. This will prevent unauthorised people from joining later. Locking a meeting can be accomplished by clicking Manage Participants and using the controls that appear on the right of the meeting window. Manage Participants also allows an organiser to mute all participants, eject select participants, or stop select participants from appearing by video.

Be aware of everything that's within view of your camera. Whether working from home or an office, there may be diagrams, drawings, notes, or other things you don't want other participants to see. Remove these from view of the camera before the meeting starts. Also consider turning off student cameras if necessary.