As news reports circulate about business meetings on the videoconferencing platform Zoom being interrupted, the Better Business Bureau is offering advice on how businesses can protect themselves from this so-called “Zoom-bombing.”
The FBI reported these two recent incidents in which an unauthorized person disrupted a video conference. In the first incident last week, a Massachusetts high school reported that while a teacher was conducting an online class using Zoom, an unidentified individual(s) dialed into the classroom, yelled a profanity and shouted the teacher’s home address.
A second Massachusetts school reported a Zoom meeting being accessed by an unidentified individual getting on a Zoom meeting and displaying swastika tattoos.
The problem hit home in Vermont when, as VTDigger.org reported, a Vermont Senate Committee on Agriculture Zoom hearing being livestreamed on YouTube was interrupted by a hacker Thursday who screenshared pornographic videos before reaching into his pants.
Government officials suggest the following steps can be taken to mitigate teleconference hijacking threats:
–Do not make meetings public. In Zoom, there are two options to make a meeting private: require a meeting password or use the waiting room feature and control the admittance of guests.
–Do not share a link to a teleconference or classroom on an unrestricted publicly available social media post. Provide the link directly to specific people.
–Manage screensharing options. In Zoom, change screensharing to “Host Only.”
–Ensure users are using the updated version of remote access/meeting applications. In January 2020, Zoom updated its software. In this security update, the teleconference software provider added passwords by default for meetings and disabled the ability to randomly scan for meetings to join.
–Lastly, ensure that your organization’s telework policy or guide addresses requirements for physical and information security.
The Better Business Bureau addresses these steps for locking down a Zoom meeting and adds a few others in a post here.