MHA issues advisory on safe use of Zoom meeting platform

New Delhi, Apr 16: The Union Home Ministry has issued an advisory on the secure use of Zoom meeting platform by private individuals. It says that it not for use by government offices, officials or official purposes.

The advisory says that Zoom is not a safe platform. Those private individuals who would still like to use Zoom for private purposes may following the guidelines, the MHA has also said.

Broad objective of this document is to enable/disable certain settings is to:

• Prevent unauthorised entry in the conference room
• Prevent an authorised participant to carry out malicious on the terminals of other in the conference.
• Avoid DOS attack by restricting users through passwords and access grant.

Most of the settings can be done by login into users zoom account at website, or installed application at PC/Laptop/Phone and also during conduct of conference.

However certain settings are possible through certain mode/channel only. For example, lock meeting can be enabled by administrator only when the meeting has started. This documents explains in details all the security configuration through website, App and through console during the conduct of conference.

Objective of security configurations:

• Setting new user ID and password for each meeting
• Enabling waiting Room, so that every user can enter only when host conducting meeting admits him
• Disabling join before host
• Allowing Screen Sharing by host Only
• Disabling "Allow removed participants to re-join"
• Restricting/disabling file transfer option (if not required)
• Locking meeting, once all attendees have joined
• Restricting the recording feature
• To end meeting (and not just leave, if you are administrator

Some tips:

Don't use your personal meeting Id (PMI) to host event, instead use randomly generated meeting IDs for each event.

Don't share your link on public platform, instead share randomly generated meeting id and password for every new meeting session/schedule. It makes it much secure and difficult to leak.

If you are admin, remember to end meeting, dont just leave meeting.

Sign out of your account when not in use