How to prevent Teleconferencing Hijacking during COVID-19 Pandemic
During our time social distancing we struggle to maintain contact with our club members as well as district committees. In an effort to stay connected we have turned to online conferencing platforms to meet with family, friend and to maintain our need to communicate with our fellow Rotarians. There are many platforms to choose from. Skype, Cisco Webex, Go-to-Meeting, Microsoft Teams and Zoom are the most popular. Many of our Rotary Clubs have chosen to use ZOOM as their platform of choice.
As you investigate the different Video-Conferencing platforms, you should consider how to secure your meeting, protect the privacy of your club members and the data that you share. Security of information should be high on your list of concerns.
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FBI Warns of Teleconferencing Hijacking during COVID-19 Pandemic
As large numbers of people turn to video-teleconferencing (VTC) platforms to stay connected in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, reports of VTC hijacking (also called “Zoom-bombing”) are emerging nationwide. The FBI has received multiple reports of conferences being disrupted by pornographic and/or hate images and threatening language.
“Zoombombing” is a new term referring to third-parties entering online meetings uninvited. It is made possible by the meeting host making the meeting public and then having the “meeting ID” compromised. Anyone with the application and ID can log into the meeting.
As our clubs continue the transition to online meetings, the FBI recommends exercising due diligence and caution in your cybersecurity efforts.
The following steps are recommended to mitigate teleconference hijacking threats and information protection:
- 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 on an unrestricted publicly available social media post.
- Provide the link directly to specific people by way of email or test
- Manage screensharing options.
- In Zoom, change screensharing to “Host Only.”
- Ensure users are using the updated version of remote access/meeting applications
- Zoom updated their software. In their 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 Clubs telework policy or guide addresses requirements for physical and information security.
Yours in Rotary Service,
David Jones
Rotary District 6630 Governor Nominee Designate (DG 2022-2023)
Rotary District 6630 Chair, Foundation Stewardship | On to Hawaii
Northampton Rotary Club Past President 2017
330.603.4107