Ride the Lightning

Zoom Fights Meeting Disruptions with New Tool

November 18, 2020

Yes, two Zoom posts in two days!

DARKReading reported on November 16 that Zoom has two new tools in version 5.4.3 which let hosts and co-hosts pause Zoom meetings to remove and report disruptive attendees.

It has also developed the At Risk Meeting Notifier, which scans social media sites and public resources for Zoom meeting links and notifies the account owners.

The Suspend Participant Activities feature, located under the Security icon, will let hosts and co-hosts temporarily pause a Zoom call and remove a disruptive attendee. During this pause, all audio, video, in-meeting chat, annotation, screen sharing, and recording will stop.

Hosts will have an option to report the user from their meeting, share details, and include a screenshot if desired. When a report is submitted, the reported user is removed and Zoom's Trust & Safety team is alerted. The paused meeting then resumes.

The feature is enabled by default for all free and paid Zoom accounts.

The other new feature, Report by Participants, lets meeting attendees report disruptive users in the Zoom interface by clicking the Security badge. Account owners and admins may control reporting for attendees in web settings. Both new features are now in Zoom desktop clients for Mac, PC, Linux, and mobile apps. Support for the web client and VDI will arrive later this year.

Zoom's At-Risk Meeting Notifier is designed to protect Zoom meeting links from publicly appearing on the internet. The tool scans public posts on social media websites and other public resources for Zoom meeting links. If it finds a meeting's information available on the Web, an email is sent to the account owners and admins so they can remove or report the post and schedule a new call.

These are excellent steps to enhance Zoom's security. Zoom continues to impress me by constantly stepping up its game since the early days of the pandemic.

Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President, Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
3975 University Drive, Suite 225|Fairfax, VA 22030
Email: Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Cybersecurity/Information Technology
https://senseient.com
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