Privacy and Security Steps for Zoom Video Meetings

Dear Parents, 

As we move forward in this remote learning landscape, many of our school-related interactions, classroom and otherwise, are taking place using the video chat platform Zoom. Zoom is becoming widely used, even outside our community, because it has proven to be an effective, easy to use tool. 

With its spike in use and popularity to the education community in this time of crisis, there have been recent reports of privacy and security related issues with Zoom. We are currently researching other video teleconference providers that provide an interface that is easy to understand and utilizes secure usage features.

In the interim, while the school community continues to use Zoom, we will be taking several steps to mitigate the privacy and security concerns as best we can. Our measures include the following: 

• All zoom meetings will be private, requiring either a meeting password or the use of a “waiting room” feature which allows the teacher/host to control the admittance of guests.
• Meeting links and information for a teleconference must not be shared or forwarded to others. Zoom links will be shared directly with the specific audience who should attend.
• Screen sharing options will be set to “Host Only” so that no other attendees can share content during the teleconference.
• All attendees will be muted by default to start a meeting. Teachers will inform students if they plan to unmute the group, something that will only happen with smaller groups. In groups larger than 20, only one student will be unmuted at a time.  
• Teleconferences with large groups will have the text chat feature disabled. 
• File sharing and annotations will be turned off for large meetings.
• Smaller class meetings will be locked once all students have joined. 

There are also ways that you can ensure your child is using Zoom in the most secure way possible. 

• Check to see if you are using the most updated version of Zoom. And if you are prompted to update your Zoom client, install the update. 
• Be on the lookout for Zoom related malware and phishing scams. To be safe, only download the Zoom client directly from the official Zoom download site (https://zoom.us/support/download) and not from anywhere else.

As more tips become available, we will share them on this page. 

Sincerely, 

George Terre
Director of Technology