The whole of India has been under lockdown for over 21 days now and the Government has extended this till May 3rd. This has caused many companies to ask their employees to work from home and in turn has caused a huge jump in the usage of online meeting platforms like Zoom, Cisco Webex and the likes. However, this has also led to a number of vulnerabilities and weaknesses being exposed on these platforms and the Ministry of Home Affairs of the Indian Government has come out with a few guidelines for safely using such platforms! The major objective of these guidelines is to prevent unauthorised entry into private conferencing, preventing unauthorised personnel from becoming a participant and carrying out mailicious work and to avoid DOS attack by restricting users through passwords for granting access!

The most simple of ways is for an administrator to enable "lock meeting", once all the participants have joined the room and the meeting has commenced. This would prevent any unwanted participants. The invitees could also be sent a one-time password to join the meeting, while sending the invite itself. A password request can be set for participants joining by phone. An administrator can also prevent participants from saving the chats and file transfer can also be disabled to prevent malicious files from being sent or received. Screen sharing can be limited to the host alone and it can be disabled for other users. Participants who had been removed earlier, can be prevented from joining again. It is possible to disable others from taking control of your camera during a meeting. A waiting room can be created and only required participants can be added to the meeting from here.

The guidelines have been given separately for both the app as well as for users from a desktop. The most important protocol to be followed is to update the app, before using it. The password required to join can be made strong and participants can be muted on entry. It has been recommended to avoid conducting meeting using Personal Meeting ID (PMI). The meeting session can be locked once all participants have joined, using the security settings. Admins are requested to end the meeting and not just leave the meeting, once it is done!