Is Information Exchange During Web Conferencing a Security Threat?
Security of information is a major concern to business houses when using online technology like web conferencing. Enterprise should assess the current security policy and take appropriate steps to safeguard information while exchanging info on a conference calling.
Most people rely on the inbuilt features of conferencing products so far security is concerned. But, you shouldn't rely only on the features of product to ensure security. Security should be part of over all process because several aspects of security have no relation with technology.
How to ensure security for web conferencing - a checklist
- Ascertain the security need of the meeting. If sensitive business critical topics like merger, acquisition, new product plan is going to be discussed stringent security measures need to be taken.
- In this your security policy of your company is more important. It's difficult for hackers to get access to internal IT infrastructure if it's protected by proper firewall. If CEO and CFO are frequently using web conferencing, you can even use the servers, which are hosted, in DMZ zone. Other words, avoid using public network.
- Security policy of your company is very important in combat against spam and identity theft. Send details of conference call time and web URL for the conference to all participants. Access to the conference equipment should be password protected. All participants should register their name using unique secret code aka PIN code. There should be a standard operating procedure for userid and password management. IT administrator of your company should change the password frequently.
- It's advisable to use "do not copy" and "do not forward" feature of Lotus note to maintain maximum security. If you don't have lotus note, talk your email administrator to find the way the same can be achieved in your mail server.
- Hackers can also use parallel devices to intercept your massage during transmission. Hence, at the minimum you should use SSL. There are several sophisticated tools available in market to protect and monitor traffic. If you are working with some third party conference call providers, you must check all the security measures of conference call service providers. Web Conference assures the privacy and integrity of your meetings through the exclusive use of HTTPS to encrypt all meeting content.
- It is highly recommended not to display extremely sensitive information during web conference. You should avoid downloading your proprietary info to other's server. If at all it is necessary, please make it a habit to delete the file immediately after completion of the call.
To the extent possible use hosted web conferencing model like WebEx or Microsoft's LiveMeeting. The advantage of hosted model is that you can keep the information within your company's IT infrastructure. However, this might be more expensive for small companies. Several mid sized company use features of lotus note for this purpose.
Information Exchange Is the Top Security Issue for audio and Web based Conferencing. This is a fact and in summary you need to do followings most religiously.
- Check the authenticity of participants.
- Change userid and password of conferencing equipments regularly
- Do not transfer or show highly classified information during videoconference.
- There should be a clear security policy related to web conferencing like how to use file transfer,
- antivirus tool and instant massaging.
- Experts are recommending using multiple platforms for web conferencing. The Cross platform
- support is only one of several ways Web Conference enables truly unique security
- You need to check for security in web conference client as well as servers. Java based system is
- purely a leader in web security as it successfully arrest "buffer overflow" problem.
- Use 128 bit HTTPS support for maximum security.
- All session activity during conferencing should be logged on the server. This data should be
- available either as reports or real-time events to a separate monitoring system. This kind policy
- enhances overall security of your organization.
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