Zoom Security

The following list will show you some recommended steps you can take to help secure your Zoom meeting from unwanted visitors.  Some of the these will also help with managing your students.

Not all of these will be appropriate for your sessions depending on the grade you teach, the subject, or your teaching style. However, the first option in this list (Waiting Room) we highly recommend, at the very least.  Note that these options will help to reduce outside interference or other student disruptions but will not be able to eliminate it completely.

• Enable the Waiting Room
• Require Students to log into a Zoom account with their hunterschools.org Google account
• Use a meeting password
• Disable "Enable Join Before Host"

Other In-Meeting Controls

• Control screen sharing
• Lock down the chat
• Remove a disruptive participant
• Put participants back into the waiting room
• Stop a disruptive participants video
• Lock your classroom
• Put an attendee on hold
• Prevent participants from saving chat
• Prevent participants from unmuting themselves
• Prevent participants annotation

Here are some other websites that talk about steps you can take in your meetings.
https://libguides.library.hunter.cuny.edu/zoombombing
https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2020/03/27/best-practices-for-securing-your-virtual-classroom/

The Waiting Room feature is one of the best ways to protect your Zoom virtual classroom and keep out those who aren’t supposed to be there.

We highly recommend inplementing this feature on all of your meetings to help protect your sessions. You will, however, have to be mindful of when you're student need to enter the class.

There is a secondary option to the Waiting Room setting.  I recommend only selecting All Participants. Since the students are not in our Zoom organization they will always be considered a "Guest" and sent to the Waiting Room.

Meeting hosts can customize Waiting Room settings for additional control, and you can even personalize the message people see when they hit the Waiting Room so they know they’re in the right spot. This message is really a great spot to post any rules/guidelines for your event, like who it’s intended for.

By requiring students to log into Zoom with their school Google account you will increase the chances of getting their real name in the meeting. Additionally you can generate a meeting report that has their school email address so you will be able to accurately identify students in your meeting.  This is especially useful for taking attendance.

Most of the students are already using their school account with Zoom.

Note: They must log into the Zoom Desktop Client.

It is understood that this may be difficult for some students to do this every time for a variety of reasons, however it is not imposable for all HS students. It is an easy process to log in and out of the Zoom application.
It is also understood that it may be even more difficult to get all ES students to do this, but we still encourage the practice.

This requirement could be more useful later on as well. More on that at a later date.

A meeting password can be very useful to in preventing outside intruders from entering your meeting.  The password can be very simple like using your last name. 

You will have to make sure your students know to use it. Either post it to your class page or email them what it is.
You don't have to share a different link than what you used before, just give them your password.  They will be required to enter the password when they try to enter your Zoom session.

When you add a password, Zoom will give you a longer link to share.  This longer link includes your password.
For Example: https://zoom.us/j/9987007294?pwd=UXdpRlpMcjVxbGtQKzIxVXYzV2NHZz09
This may seem simpler so that students won't need to type a password but we recommend using the short version.
For Example: https://zoom.us/j/9987007294
That way if the password gets leaked, it's easier to change the password then needing to change the whole link.

You DO NOT NEED to enable "Enable Join Before Host."  It is unnecessary for any of the features in Zoom, including the "Breakout Room pre-assign" feature.

If this feature is enabled, it will allow participants to join the meeting before the host does.

This will be a brief description of the in-meeting controls available to you and their implications.

Some of these controls are described more on the Feature Highlight page:
https://hunterschools.myschoolapp.com/page/zoom/feature-highlights

Lock down the chat feature so that students will only be able to speak to the host or to no one, unless you specifically want the chat feature to be more open.

No One: Chat will be disabled for all students.  They will only be able to receive messages from the host.
Host Only: Students will only be able to chat with the host privately and not other students.
Everyone Publicly: Students will be able to chat with everyone publicly but not privately with other students.
Everyone Publicly and Privately: Students will be able to chat with everyone publicly and privately with each other.

You can remove participants from the meeting. Other setting will have an impact on this option.  Participants will be unable to return if the meeting is locked.

You can put participants back into the waiting room.  This is another way of removing participants from the meeting.

If enabled this setting will override the ability to put participants on hold, which is essentially the same thing.  The only difference is you can put someone into the waiting room when they try to join the meeting.

You can stop the video of a participant. Once the video is stopped by the host they will be prevented from being able to start their video back unless they get permission from the host.

You can lock your Zoom meeting.  No one will be able to join the meeting while it is locked.

Put On Hold allows the host to stop video and audio transmission to a participant or participants. This is exactly the same as putting one one in the waiting room.

"Put On Hold" will be overriden by "Put in Waiting Room" if Waiting Room is enabled for your meeting.

When you enabled this option from your Profile Settings, make sure you press the save button the will appear beneath it.
Once enabled it will effectively prevent your students from being able to save the contents of the chat.

You can prevent your students from unmuting themselves at anytime.  You will have control over who is muted or unmuted. Uncheck the option from the participants window.

If you are sharing your screen in any way. Students will be able to annotate (draw or type) on your shared screen.  This can be very disruptive. You can either disabled Annotation from your Profile Settings or your can "Disable participants annotation" from within the meeting.