Prevent Zoombombing - someone hacking into your web meeting to share lewd and offensive content. This page provides a number of options to secure your meeting and protect participants' privacy in the meeting.
It's important to have a plan for if Zoombombing happens despite your best efforts. This is violent behavior, even online,and people in the meetings will be affected by it. Once you have expelled the hackers or locked down the meeting, remember to take time to acknowledge the violence in the moment (racist, sexist, etc), and possibly give people time or space to recover either after the meeting or after the attack.
Security settings may affect accessibility for students in your class, so please review these guidelines for accessible Zoom meetings making any changes.
Zoom is not to be used for the transmission of patient data, or for any clinical needs, and host accounts will only be provided to Augusta University students, faculty and staff.
Require that participants enter a password before they are allowed to join your meeting.
Note: If you do password protect your meetings, make sure you provide the password through a secure means. For example, you can post it to D2L where only students who are logged in with their NetID and password can see it.
There are two steps that you must complete before you start your meeting.
Add a password when you create your meeting either through the the Web Portal or via D2L.
Small meetings: Control when students enter a meeting.
Note: A waiting room may be unwieldy for meetings with 10 or more participants. Consider locking your room instead.
When you turn this setting on, students will be taken to a waiting room once they click the Zoom link, where they linger until the host gives them access to the actual meeting. Hosts can use this feature to meet with one person at a time, such as for office hours. They can also use this feature to add security to the meeting, since they must approve all participants. This takes two steps, one before and one during the meeting.
Note: It is possible to "admit all" people in a waiting room at once.
You can do this when you create your meeting or if you enter the meeting early, you can do it in the meeting before other participants arrive.
When you create a new meeting, which you can do by either 1) logging into Zoom via the web; or 2) navigating to it through your course site , you are given a set of meeting options. Check the option to Enable waiting room.
When someone enters the waiting room, the host gets a message at the bottom of the screen.
To allow entry, click either:
Large meetings: Lock your meeting after it starts to prevent new people joining.
Note: If you use a waiting room, you do not need to lock your meeting.
Once your students are logged into the Zoom meeting, you can "lock" it. This prevents anyone else from joining through the link or meeting ID. If they do attempt to join, they will be shown the following message: "This meeting is locked."
To lock your meeting:
To unlock a meeting and allow people to join:
Remove disruptive people from your meeting.
This takes two steps, one before and one during your meeting. First, you need to change a setting to prevent them from simply rejoining, then you'll be able to remove them permanently during the meeting.
Prevent hackers from taking over the screen by limiting screen-sharing to hosts only.
Turn off annotations to prevent offensive content on the main screen.
Annotations allow you and participants to virtually write on the shared screen or whiteboard. However, they can be used by malicious actors to put offensive content in the meeting. You can turn this feature off for participants by following these steps.
Zoombombers are using microphones to shout out obscene and offensive things.
Note: You can use these steps mid-meeting if someone breaks into your meeting and takes over the microphone. You can also use these settings to secure your meeting from the start.
Once the meeting is underway, you can lock it (see section 3 above) so no one new can join. If you have muted microphones, it is now safe to unmute them. Repeat the steps above, this time selecting Allow Participants to Unmute Themselves.
If you enter the meeting before everyone else (a waiting room helps with this), you can mute everyone as they enter the room
Note: A If you prevent participants from unmuting themselves, you may want to direct them to click the Participants icon and use the Raise Hand option. You can mouse over the student's name and unmute them to allow them to speak. When they are finished you can remute them the same way.
You can control whether participants are able to chat (via text) during your meeting.
Hosts can still use the chat function even though it is disabled for participants.
Turn off the whiteboard to prevent offensive content on the main screen.
The whiteboard allows you to write or draw on a virtual whiteboard shared with the whole meeting. However, it can be used by malicious actors to put offensive content in the meeting. You can turn the whiteboard sharing feature off for participants by following these steps.
Change recording settings so participants are not identified in the video.
Protect the meeting IDs and links from easy access by hackers.
Zoom's simplicity means that a meeting ID is often the only thing someone needs to join (and disrupt) your meetings. While the steps above can mitigate this, protecting your meeting IDs will also help protect participants and hosts here are some suggestions:
Use authentication for your meeting so that only AU users can join.
Authentication allows the host to restrict participants who can join a meeting to those who are logged into Zoom with their AU Zoom account. Anyone outside of the university who doesn't have an AU netID and access to a AU Zoom account will not be able to join your meeting. This could affect outside guest speakers that you might want to join your meeting. So if you are wanting outside guest speakers to join do not use this option for your meetings.
If a participant tries to join a meeting or webinar and is not logged into Zoom with their AU Zoom account, or they are logged in with some other Zoom account besides their AU Zoom account, they will receive one of the following messages:
You can review and provide the following PDF document to your students that will instruct themhow to join a meeting that has authentication required.
Sign In to a Zoom Meeting that Requires Authentication
Learn how to enable authentication for your meetings on your Zoom account.
First we need to enable the authentication setting on your Zoom account. This will allow you to choose the option when you are scheduling your meeting. To enable Only authenticated users can join meetings on your Zoom account do the following:
Learn how to turn on authentication while scheduling a meeting.
Learn how to add exceptions to authenticated users requirement.
For instances where a guest needs to be brought into a Augusta University Zoom meeting but the security standard of requiring authentication is desired, users can add exceptions to the authentication requirement. Adding these exceptions thus allows non-AU Zoom users to participant in a Zoom meeting that requires AU Zoom authentication.
Note: Exceptions can only be added from within the Zoom web portal (zoom.augusta.edu). If you are creating or editing a meeting within D2L you will not be able to add an authentication exception. Access that meeting through the Zoom web portal to add the exception.
Adding exceptions when scheduling a meeting from zoom.augusta.edu
Adding exceptions to an existing meeting or a meeting that has been created within D2L
If you have a meeting requiring authentication that has already been scheduled using the Augusta University Zoom web portal, the Zoom desktop application, through a D2L course site, or from an Outlook invitation, you can add exceptions as well.
