Best Practices for Securing Your Zoom Meetings

Zoom: Perception vs. Reality

Negative Press:

We have undoubtedly all heard the many reports questioning the security readiness of Zoom as of late. Are there impactful vulnerabilities, and is Zoom safe? We have even seen negative fallout due to some of the reported concerns. For example, the New York City school system has banned the use of Zoom as a direct result of the perceived security flaws within the Zoom platform. The problem is, much of what we are hearing is more about perception than reality, and the challenge is to sift through the facts versus fiction.

By now, you are in the midst of working from home and trying to define what the “new normal” looks like for you and your family. Reflecting on what that has looked like for me over the course of the past month, I noticed some details that raised my level of concern.

One of my best friends turned 40 a few of weeks ago. He lives in Colorado, I live in Illinois, and both of our states have been under shelter-in-place orders for a while now. Going to see him was not an option. The bigger problem, however, was that our local friends were not going to be able to join him, either. Instead, his wife put together a surprise Zoom meeting, and we all joined together in singing “Happy Birthday” and sharing a few minutes of conversation and well-wishes, along with the now-customary, “Stay safe.”

Dorothy went through a lot in the Wizard of Oz, but her main objective was to get back home to Kansas. With the COVID-19 crisis, we are all going through a lot right now. However, after the crisis settles down, we won’t be able to go back to “Kansas” as it was. Things will have changed forever.

I’ve been spending a lot of my time talking with customers about remote worker strategies. Most are sending their employees home to work. As I discussed in an earlier blog post, for some customers it’s a very easy, short conversation (i.e., those that have already adopted a mobile-first strategy). For others, that discussion is a bit more involved. Customers who find themselves behind the 8-ball are not looking for a long, strategic, vendor-agnostic conversation. They want to know what they can do now. So, when conversations go that direction, it’s time to roll up the sleeves and dive into the tactical weeds. They don’t have time for a rip and replace. They require a vendor-specific conversation, that can include layered cloud services on top of their existing platform.

These are times that many of us have never lived through or previously had to adjust to. Children have been sent home from school and for many college students, the rest of the semester is now adjusting to an online format. As for employees, most of our clients are asking for ways to allow their employees to work remotely. Mostly, with contact centers, they are the first ones to be tackled. This blog provides thinking beyond the technical aspects needed for a successful transition.

I’m always a little surprised when I meet with a company that hasn’t embraced a mobile-first philosophy when it comes to deploying its unified communications (UC) solutions. What does it mean to be mobile? We all know mobility is important. Once you have it, you really can’t imagine life before it. You know the saying: Work is what you do, not where you go. Obviously, this doesn’t apply to every job function, but a lot of information worker-type jobs can be done from anywhere.

Historically, I’ve worked in an office setting where I grew familiar interacting with people and co-workers face-to-face. Having spent the bulk of my adult life working in offices and among other people, I grew accustomed to the luxury of dropping in on co-workers, chatting at the coffee machine, and walking down the hall to ask a co-worker a quick question. The casual drop-ins became the norm for me and my co-workers, and it was a critical part of how we worked together and created a strong and positive work culture.

The past few weeks have been interesting, as several customers have inquired about how to best prepare for a health pandemic. Within this same period of time, one of our industry’s largest conference, HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society), cancelled its conference (with 42,000 registered participants) due to concerns about COVID-19, commonly known as coronavirus. Clearly, our industry—and society as a whole—are paying attention and investigating next steps for dealing with this outbreak.