Is Video Conferencing Safe?

Is video conferencing safe?

In these unprecedented times more and more businesses are turning to video conferencing and calls to keep in touch with colleagues and clients and to conduct business remotely. In fact, the Zoom platform have reported that they have seen a surge in usage that has closely followed the spread of the Covid-19 virus across the world.

Whilst we are witnessing many examples of great community spirit and togetherness on a daily basis, it is vital to remember that there are also hackers out there that will see this increase in video traffic as an opportunity to gain access to sensitive information that could prove costly for your business, you personally or both.

For many people, video conferencing and calling is a normal part of the way they conduct business but for a great many more this will be a new concept. There are currently numerous reports circulating from trusted sources of security breaches affecting the very popular video platform Zoom. The FBI have reported that they have received a number of complaints of group video sessions being accessed by hackers who disrupt the call in some way. Remember, if they are able to enter the call and participate, they could also have been recording it. Clearly this could be of great concern; sensitive business or personal information may have been stolen that could then be used against you.

In most cases it is quite easy to mitigate against these attacks. It is vital that you and everyone participating in video conferencing follows best practices for internet security. Before any calls make sure you and your team are using the very latest version of the whichever software platform you choose.

Make sure that every session you start has been set to private so that only the invited members can join. Do not be tempted to reduce the default security settings for convenience. Share the link to the session directly with all participants; this limits the risk of people entering the session on a domain that has been set up by hackers to impersonate Zoom.

As with any online activity, always use strong, random passwords. It can be frustrating having lots of different strong passwords to remember and it is natural to want to reuse passwords to save time and make life easier. This could prove to be very costly. There are some very good secure password vaults that you can use which will generate and store a different password for each site you use meaning that you only need to remember one password. At Lead Wolf we use Last Pass which provides a very convenient way to increase your online security and also has a free option, which for many people would be more than adequate.

At Lead Wolf we are continuing to help clients set up video conferencing through their websites using Zoom to facilitate contacting clients and generating leads at a time when nobody will be walking through their showroom doors.