If your business has migrated to remote work, every meeting your team hosts or joins is going to be virtual for the next few weeks and possibly months. The good news is there are excellent cloud-based collaboration tools that make online meetings easy. The bad news is that like all things online, virtual meetings can be hacked, exposing information to bad actors.
Think about it — if a company meeting was high-jacked, legal or financial information, trade secrets, or sensitive personal identifying information (PII) can be stolen and used to commit theft or fraud. It’s not just discussions that can be compromised, it’s also screens and files shared as well as voice and video recordings.
The FlexIP Solutions team has been using and selling cloud-based collaboration solutions for years, so to help you keep your meetings private, we’ve put together a list of the top 5 best practices for securing virtual meetings on top of access and endpoint security measures you’ve already put in place:
- Use a Unique Meeting Passcode
Nearly every web meeting application has a passcode or password option to join the meeting. The passcode setting may be optional in some web meeting platforms, so be sure to enable it. If applicable, require your web meeting platform to generate a unique URL for each user invited to the meeting for maximum security.
- Require a Waiting Room
Use a web meeting application that allows you to create a waiting room or lobby in which each participant waits until the meeting host manually approves or denies their entry into the call. Anyone attempting to get into the meeting who isn’t authorized will be stopped and booted from the meeting before it begins.
- Keep Screen-Sharing Controls with the Meeting Host
Settings in most web meeting software allow you to give the meeting host sole permission to screen share or delegate screen-sharing capabilities to specified users during the call. If an unauthorized user manages to get into the call, this setting will prevent them from hijacking your screen during the meeting.
- Pay Attention to Industry Compliance Requirements like FINRA and HIPAA
Compliance regulations such as FINRA and HIPAA are not necessarily just about the technology, they’re also about how you use that technology. You may be able to host patients or financial customers in a secure web meeting, but your industry’s regulations extend to your home, too. This means that any sensitive data may still need to remain between you and the customer.
If you’re a health care worker, for example, and you’re screen-sharing patient test results in a web call, no one else – including spouse or children — can be in your office space or you’ve broken HIPAA’s requirements.
- Security is Digital, but it’s Also Physical
When most companies or IT managers think of security, they tend to think about securing their Internet connection and locking down endpoints. While these digital measures are critical, security also has a physical component to it as well. Consider the following:
- Who can see my screen in the room where I’m physically located?
- Is anything on my screen proprietary and confidential?
- Who has access to my workstation in off-hours and is my workstation password protected?
The reality is that many of your employees aren’t going to be thinking about ways to keep information secure; they’re just trying to get work done. It’s up to you to set the guidelines and implement best practices that will keep your organization secure whether you’re working from the office or at home.
P.S. For a real-world look at setting up secure meetings, watch our video tutorial on how to schedule meetings and set security settings for our Flex Meeting service through the Flex UCaaS platform.
Need Help with Secure Web Meetings?
Contact a FlexIP Solutions Specialist Today!
