Videoconferencing best practices

The moment of emergency that we went through and that we are still living to a large extent, triggered the massive use of videoconferencing solutions.

There are several options on the market and many of them saw its number of regular users increase by tens of millions in a few weeks. This exponential growth has placed these solutions under great public scrutiny and a significant number of security issues have been reported in some of them.

Some of these issues were real and were promptly addressed and solved by the manufacturers, having changed features and made available successive new versions of client apps. However, other issues were related to the way we use these solutions.

Like all the tools that we use in our daily lives, there is always a balance between security and usability, and the increase in one of these factors is always done at the expense of the other.

Videoconferencing solutions are now more secure, provided that some basic usage principles are taken into account:

- Client Apps must be regularly updated so that we always have the latest version. The update is the mechanism used to correct security problems;

- A browser can also be used for videoconferencing, which is usually safer than the Client App, although sacrificing some usability;

- Whenever you schedule a meeting, activate the “Waiting room” option. This way, you will be able to individually authorize each participant to join the meeting, not allowing strangers to do so without scrutiny;

- Always schedule password-protected meetings. Under these conditions, participants will have to provide it to participate in the meeting;

- The meeting link should only be shared with the participants and in a way that absolutely guarantees this objective;

- Pay attention and control what you show when you share the screen;

- Videoconferences should be held in private and visually neutral locations, always avoiding to share unnecessary information (visual and acoustic).

Never forget that everything you say or show in a videoconference can be recorded by third parties (including using stealth tools to do it).