Meeting security - best settings

[FredBloggs]

I'm having a meeting where I'm inviting about 25 people, but encouraging those people to forward the invitation to friends of theirs who might be interested.  If I'm lucky, I'll get 50 people to the meeting.  I'm encouraging people to let me know if they plan to log into the meeting, but I'm not having much success at getting responses, and I want people to be there, so I don't want to mandate that they respond.

I am somewhat concerned about Zoom bombing.

Trying to figure out best security settings:

1. Password:  no brainer.
2. Only allow authenticated users to join:  I think this will create all sorts of problems.  Some of the likely attendees are not all that tech savvy.  I don't think I can use this.
3. Waiting room:  Problem here is that I may not know a friend of a friend, so if I have John Smith in the waiting room, I either have to quiz him about who he is, or I just let him in and hope for the best.  And if "iPhone 9" joins, good luck....  So in practice, the waiting room seems like it might add lots of fiddly decisions and stress.
4. I can only allow participants from particular countries.  There will definitely be people from half-a-dozen countries on the call, and I could allow only those countries.  That leaves a possibility that someone's friend dials in from a country not on the list, but that's probably a small risk.  This is helpful if I know that most Zoom bombing arises from countries outside this list, but if most Zoom bombing comes from within the US, Canada, UK..., it won't do much to help me.

So I seem to be stuck with using a password only, and hoping that no one is dumb enough to post the invitation on social media where it can be seen?   Any words of wisdom on how to proceed, and how much risk of Zoom bombing there actually is?

[YaBoiB]

Hello,
My name is Brandon. Thanks for joining the Zoom Community! I suggest "Scheduling a meeting with Registration" and setting it up to be manually approved. That way, you will have each participant's email address, and if you have any concerns about who is being invited, you can check with that person via email. This is the safest way, allowing passcode and the waiting room options to avoid Zoom Bombing possibly. 

I hope that this helps. 

Brandon

[FredBloggs]

Thanks, Brandon.  I hadn't thought about registration as an option.  I'm still not sure whether it's going to work.  As I noted, I'm finding it hard to get people to let me know if they're coming, and if I force them to register, some number might just drop out.  So there's a tradeoff between a small chance of a Zoom Bombing disaster and a larger chance of losing some people as a result.

Are there any ideas out there about exactly how frequent Zoom bombing is?  One in a thousand meetings is bombed?  Or more/less?

[YaBoiB]

Hello @FredBloggs,

 When security measures are taken into account no Zoom Bombings occur. Zoom bombings occur when users post their join links on social media and we have seen a steady decrease in Zoom Bombings since the pandemic first started and the world was introduced to Zoom. I do not have exact statistics though to back that up. 

I created a test meeting with Registration so that you can view the user side of how a registration meeting works. To me it is very simple and very secure. I also added that every participant must be logged in to their Zoom account to attend so that I can match up their email address to their name. Please click on the registration link if you would like to see what a registration meeting user experience. 

https://team-schawang-test-vanity.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0qcumsqj4uG9xlw2i_PHBbKIfWtRRX8IJY

Please note that this is a fictitious meeting for sandbox purposes only. 

Brandon

[FredBloggs]

Thanks, that's helpful - I appreciate your willingness to go out of your way to show me how it would work.  But I think in my case, it's going to be too hard to get everyone to be willing to register - and some won't have a Zoom account, so I wouldn't go the extra step of insisting they be logged into their Zoom account.  I think I'm just going to use a password, request that people don't post the link on social media, and hope for the best.