Prevent Uninvited Automated Meeting Tools and Participants with Account Settings

Users and admins can use the following settings to prevent uninvited automated meeting tools, dial-in users, and third-party room systems from joining Zoom Meetings.

Enable Waiting Room when scheduling meetings or for your entire account

Waiting Room is a virtual staging area that stops participants from joining a meeting until the meeting host admits them. Waiting Room has several configurations described earlier in this document that can be enabled on multiple levels within your Zoom account, ensuring that Waiting Room is active for all meetings or for specific users.

The following Waiting Room settings can be enabled by individual users in their personal settings, as well as at the group and account levels by administrators and owners:

Users can also choose to enable Waiting Room while scheduling individual meetings:

Require a meeting passcode

Requiring a meeting passcode is an integral security measure to help prevent uninvited participants from attempting to join meetings.

These settings can be enabled by individual users, or at the group and account levels by admins and owners:

Account owners and admins can lock settings to require passcodes for all meetings on their account and configure minimum passcode requirements.

Use automatically generated meeting IDs

Automatically generated meeting IDs are unique, randomly generated meeting ID numbers that temporarily expire after a meeting ends. This will prevent users from returning to existing meeting IDs and potentially misusing them. An automatically generated meeting ID number will not be reused for thirty days after a meeting has ended. If a meeting with an automatically generated ID number is restarted by the host, the thirty-day blackout period for that ID number will restart.

Select the Generate Automatically option under the Meeting ID section while scheduling a meeting from the Zoom desktop client, mobile app, or web portal.

Automated meeting tools that have access to your calendar or Zoom account will automatically reference the unique or personal meeting ID and passcode for each calendar event containing a Zoom Meeting invitation and use that information to automatically join the meeting.

Limit the use of your Personal Meeting ID

Your Personal Meeting Room is a virtual meeting room permanently reserved for you that you can access with your Personal Meeting ID (PMI) or personal link, if applicable. You can start instant meetings with your PMI, or you can schedule a meeting that uses your PMI.

Your Personal Meeting ID (PMI) is ideal for use with people you know and meet with regularly. Because it is always accessible with the same Meeting ID and personal link, your PMI should not be used for back-to-back meetings or with unknown people outside of your organization. Limiting the use of your PMI to interactions with trusted users will help keep it from being distributed for potential misuse.

The following PMI settings can be enabled by individual users in their personal settings, as well as at the group and account levels by administrators and owners:

Require authentication for meeting participants

The Only authenticated meeting participants and webinar attendees can join meetings and webinars option requires participants to sign in to Zoom before they can join a Zoom Meeting or Webinar once enabled. Hosts can further restrict meeting participants and webinar attendees to Zoom users whose email addresses match a certain domain. This can be useful if you want to restrict your participant list to verified users or users from a specific organization. These settings can be enabled by individual users, or at the group and account levels by admins and owners:

If authentication is required, participants without a Zoom account will not be able to join the meeting or webinar.

Use image watermarks to help identify the source of video content captured

The image watermark feature superimposes an image consisting of the viewing participant’s email address onto the shared content and over their video in most video layouts (Speaker, Gallery, Side-by-side). You can also display several instances of the watermark so that it’s more visibly apparent across the video or shared screen. This feature can help deter the unintended capture of content shared during meetings.

When a participant shares their screen during a meeting or webinar, the email of the user who is viewing the content will be patterned across the shared content, as well as on the video of the other visible participants. For example, if [email protected] is viewing shared content, the watermark of [email protected] will be patterned across the shared content and the videos of the participants as shown in this image.

The Only authenticated meeting participants and webinar attendees can join meetings and webinars setting must be enabled to use video watermarks.

The image watermark setting is only available when scheduling meetings through the Zoom web portal. Other scheduling methods, such as the Zoom desktop client or the Microsoft Outlook plugin or add-in, do not support the availability of the image watermark settings.

Restrict local recording requests

During Zoom Meetings, participants and automated meeting tools may request the ability to start a local recording that will be stored on the computer of the participant making the request. The meeting host can grant or deny any local recording requests sent to them.

The Who can request host permission to record setting allows hosts to restrict the ability to record locally for external meeting participants. This setting can be enabled at the account level and the group level by the account owner or administrators.

When this setting is enabled, the record button will be removed from the participant control menu for external participants who have joined the Zoom Meeting.

Enable audio watermark

Audio watermark, or audio signature, embeds a user’s personal information in the received audio as an inaudible watermark. This means that if someone records the meeting with either a separate microphone or a third-party tool and shares the audio file without permission, Zoom can assist with determining which participant was responsible. The audio watermark feature can only be enabled by account owners and administrators through the Account Management settings.

The Only authenticated meeting participants and webinar attendees can join meetings and webinars setting must be enabled to use audio watermark.

Select Computer Audio as the meeting Audio Type

By selecting Computer Audio as your desired audio type for Zoom Meetings, you can disable all meeting participants’ ability to dial in by telephone/PSTN. This may be an effective option if your organization does not use telephone or third-party audio to join meetings and would like to block any uninvited participants from trying to dial in.

Audio Type can be selected by individual users, or at the group and account levels by admins and owners:

Confirm that your organization or external meeting participants are relying on something other than telephone/PSTN dial-in options to join your meetings before selecting Computer Audio as your preferred audio type.

Block dial-in users when Waiting Room is disabled

Meeting hosts who are not using Waiting Room can block dial-in users who intend to call in to a meeting by selecting the following setting within the Zoom web portal. This setting is in the meeting security section and can be enabled by individual users, or at the group and account levels by admins and owners:

Use end-to-end encryption (E2EE)

End-to-end encryption (E2EE) for meetings provides additional protection when needed and requires all meeting participants to join from the Zoom desktop client or mobile app, or a Zoom Room.

This setting is in the meeting security section of the Zoom web portal and can be enabled by individual users, or at the group and account levels by admins and owners:

Users will not be able to use any of the following technologies to join meetings when end-to-end encryption is enabled:

• Telephone/PSTN

• Third-party SIP/H.323 devices

• On-premises configurations (Zoom Meeting Connector and Virtual Connector)

• Zoom web client

• Third-party clients leveraging the Zoom Web SDK

The following features can not be used when end-to-end encryption is enabled:

• Translation

• Captions

• Archiving

• AI Companion Summary

• AI Companion Questions

Use Zoom Meetings Hybrid

With the Zoom Node platform, you can deploy the Zoom Meetings Hybrid module, which is an on-premises, hybrid solution that hosts a meeting’s or webinar’s audio, video, and screen sharing streams within a corporate network. Zoom Meetings Hybrid can do this in two distinct modes: hybrid mode and private mode, with both modes offering local survivability. Private mode is similar to end-to-end encryption since the encryption key is generated on premises and is not shared with the Zoom cloud. Private Mode offers a bit more flexibility than end-to-end encryption because recording can be done via the Zoom Recording Hybrid module. Also, administrators can explicitly choose to allow apps, Zoom Realtime Media Streams, and cloud services like AI Companion, though in that case, the encryption key is shared with those services. For more information about Zoom Meetings Hybrid, refer to the Zoom Node Explainer.

Use Zoom Events or Zoom Webinars for public virtual events

Zoom Meetings is a powerful tool for collaboration among your peers and Zoom users that you know and trust. However, if you intend to hold a public event with unknown participants, please consider using Zoom Webinars or Zoom Events.

Zoom has a robust set of security features designed to help hosts manage and safeguard their event experience. A Zoom Webinar or Event host may choose to manually approve or decline anyone who registers. Hosts can also remove an attendee or lock a webinar or event to prevent additional attendees from joining once the webinar or event has started. In addition, webinar and event hosts can choose to require passcodes or authentication for an added layer of security.