Further Guidance to Faculty on Zoom and other video conferencing platforms

April 7, 2020

This message was shared by Information Systems.

Dear Colleagues,

We applaud and appreciate your rapid adoption of Zoom, WebEx, Google Meet and other technologies in the remote delivery of your courses. As you may have heard in the media, across the country there have been instances of Zoom classes and meetings being disrupted by bad actors using hateful speech and images. Zoombombing has become a new verb, referring to uninvited guests gate crashing classes and meetings. In response, Zoom has made a number of updates, including changing default meeting settings so that only meeting hosts can screen share. Zoom has also updated its desktop application to address security and privacy concerns around data-mining. If you have not updated yours yet, please do so the next time you are prompted when using the desktop application.

As we continue to rely on and utilize these tools, it is important that you take steps to protect your virtual learning environments. To this end, Information Systems (IS) has developed a set of privacy and security best practices. Whether you are using Google Meet, Webex, or Zoom, recommended practices involve creating layers of security for your classes and meetings.

• Limit your attendees to @wfu.edu accounts. Depending on the nature of your meeting, this could be an easy way to ensure only trusted Wake Foresters can join your Zoom meeting.
• Secure Entrance to your class. Locking your room or enabling a virtual waiting room is an easy way to prevent uninvited guests from joining your meeting. Hosts can then decide who to let in when.
• Set passwords for each class. You can set a password for all your meetings by adjusting your global settings, making it harder for hackers to guess. If you are concerned that might present a barrier to entry for your students to join class, Zoom embeds the passwords in the meeting links, allowing them to still join with just one click.

Learn more about how to enable each of these settings on AskDeac.

For a deeper dive into best practices for securing your classroom, read this article by Hannah Inzko, IS Senior Director of Academic Technology, to learn more about securing entrance to your class, keeping disruption out, and taking back control once you have shared meeting host privileges.

If you have questions or need assistance, please contact the Information Systems Service Desk at help@wfu.edu or 336-758-4357 (HELP).

Best regards,

Mur Muchane
Vice President for Information Technology & CIO