Video Conference Security: Best Practices

Online Meeting Security Checklist

To review/practice ahead of time with your team:

• Don’t share your Meeting ID on social media or public websites
• Update to the latest version to make sure you have the most recent Security Settings (Updating Your Zoom Version: How to on PC or How to on Mac)
• Claiming Host and assigning Co-hosts
• Muting All Participants (and disabling ability to unmute themselves)
• Security Icon Settings
  • Disabling Screen Share
  • Removing Participants
  • Enabling Waiting Room or Locking Meeting
  • If needed, you can even click "Suspend Participant Activities" to instantly shut down all attendees from being heard/seen until you've removed the infractor and are ready to resume.
• In your Settings: 
  • Consider Disabling join before host or adding a simple password to your event
  • Changing the "..." settings under Chat to "Only Hosts and co-hosts"
• Set up a plan with your team co-leads to have a dedicated group chat (i.e. on your phones, Google Chat, etc.) to be able to communicate live-time during the meeting if something goes wrong or needs to be privately communicated with each other.

Right before the meeting

• Login, claim host (if needed) and assign co-hosts to your tech team and any speakers
• Review final shared responsibilities:
  1. Someone monitors chat and waiting room
  2. Someone monitors participants to help unmute for Q&A and check for inappropriate names/videos to remove
• Welcome people as they come on

As the meeting begins

• Mute all lines (and consider disabling participants being able to mute themselves)
• Enable the waiting room feature (if so your co-host will need to watch for latecomers and admit them)
• Hit record and walk through instructions on how to participate (i.e. chat, raise hand (*9 if on phone), to unmute click microphone icon or use *6 to unmute, etc.)

If someone disrupts your meeting

• Keep talking (see below) to help keep featuring your audio/video instead of the disruptor. 
• Mute the offending participant or remove (whichever you can do fastest)
• Lock Meeting and have your co-hosts scan for any other bad actors to remove

As you practice removing a participant, practice saying the following phrases so if they are needed in any incident it’s an automatic process.

During the interruption:

Repeat saying - “I’m sorry everyone, we’re going to remove them for this unacceptable behavior. This person is being removed.”

After the interruption:

"I’m sorry for the interruption. We had an incident, the person has been removed, will be reported and now we're going to proceed to not let them disrupt us further. If you’d like to process this please reach out to me after our meeting." 

For More Support

• For Zoom Support: https://support.zoom.us/
• For Google Meet: https://support.google.com/meet/
• For Microsoft Teams: https://support.office.com/teams
• For Skype Meet Now: https://support.skype.com
• For Webex download: https://www.webex.com/downloads.html and sign up for a free account: https://cart.webex.com/sign-up
• CCL Tech Support Forum: https://cclusa.org/tech-support-forum

• Madeleine Para

Download Google Slides presentation.