Zoom Best Practices

You may have heard in the news recently reports of “Zoom bombing.” Zoom Bombing is when someone gains access to your Zoom room and attempts to disrupt the meeting with offensive imagery and words. When Zoom meetings are made public, it is possible for anyone with the link to “bomb” the meeting. 

You can protect your meetings by logging into your Zoom account and changing your settings to prevent Zoom bombings: 

1. Do not share your Zoom meeting room publicly. A meeting is made public if it is shared to a public space, such as Twitter or Facebook, or if someone with the meeting link shares it with others. Only share the link and meeting ID with those who need to gain access to the meeting.
2. Schedule a meeting instead of using your personal meeting ID. Your personal meeting room is the only persistent room you have and should only be used with people you trust. Instead, schedule meetings using the Zoom integration in Canvas or through the Zoom app. When you schedule a meeting, Zoom creates a temporary room with a unique ID separate from your personal meeting ID.
3. Require a password for your meeting. When you schedule a meeting, one option you have is to set a password for that meeting. This can add an extra layer of security as only those with the password would then be able to join your meeting room.
4. If you’re scheduling a meeting outside of the Zoom integration in Canvas, check the option that allows only authenticated users to join your meeting. Checking this option means users would have to be logged in to Zoom in order to join in the meeting.
5. Add a waiting room to your Zoom meeting when scheduling a meeting in Zoom. The waiting room feature allows you to control who enters your meeting room.
6. Limit who can share their screen in your meeting. By default, only the host can share their screen. This will limit someone’s ability to drop in the room and share something in the main space that would disrupt the room. If you do allow other participants to share, limit it so that only one participant can share at a time and only the host can start sharing when someone else is sharing.

Still Want to Allow Others to Share Their Screen?

Inside a Zoom meeting room, click on the down arrow next to the Share option in the Zoom menu bar and select "Advanced Sharing Options" from the options provided. Under "Who can share?", select "All Participants", but make sure that "Only Host" is selected under the option "Who can start sharing when someone else is sharing?" See Zoom's update to learn more about this feature.