If you're using Zoom to collaborate with your work colleagues, teachers, students, or even relatives, we want to pass along these useful tips that one of our valued donors, Reagan Circle member Mary Morris, sent us to ensure our meetings remain secure. Feel free to pass along to your circle of influence!

Don't share your personal meeting ID (PMI) online to host public events. Your Personal Meeting ID is essentially one continuous meeting that anyone can pop in and out of at any time. Instead, use a unique meeting ID for each separate meeting. When you schedule a meeting, you can have Zoom do this by default. Just make sure "Use Personal Meeting ID when scheduling a meeting" is toggled off.

By the way, this won't only keep bad actors away, it will also help ensure that you don't accidentally end up with the attendees from your next meeting dropping in early.

If you do use your Personal Meeting ID, you can require that a password is needed when joining meetings that use a Personal Meeting ID. This will require that you provide the password in a secure way and only share it with the people you want in your meeting. Just be careful not to share that online, otherwise it defeats the entire point.

Instead of using a Personal Meeting ID, it’s best practice to generate a random meeting ID. To configure this option, deselect (uncheck) "Use Personal Meeting ID" in your Zoom account setting to ensure that a random meeting ID is always used when scheduling a meeting.

The waiting room feature places every guest into a virtual "waiting room." When you start a meeting, you will then manually admit your guests. This gives you control over who can attend and makes it easier to keep unwanted guests out.

By restricting screen sharing to only the host, you can prevent anyone else from being able to display what is on their desktop. To do this, make sure the "Disable desktop/screen share" for user is turned on (it's off by default).

Zoom does provide the option for your meeting to start before the host joins. This can be convenient if you're hosting a meeting and are running a few minutes behind, allowing everyone else to get started on time. However, if you want to protect your meetings, it's best to turn this feature off when conducting public-facing meetings. To do this, make sure the "Join before host" setting is turned off.

When you lock a Zoom Meeting after it has started, no new participants can join—even if they have the meeting ID and password. In the meeting, click "Participants" at the bottom of your Zoom window. In the Participants pop‐up, click the button that says Lock Meeting.

We hope you find these tips useful!