Choosing a Teleconferencing Tool for Your Business while Protecting Privacy

With the increase of remote work, organizations are using teleconferencing tools to support working from home. Nevertheless, organizations should still go through their normal due diligence processes to determine whether these tools are providing the necessary privacy protections. Using “out of the box” teleconferencing and video conferencing solutions may have some inherent privacy and security risks that can leave personal information available to be intercepted, listened in on, unintentionally disclosed or open to cyberattacks.

To help minimize these risks you can do the following:

When choosing a product verify….

• if they have a privacy policy that is easy to find or read. Does it comply with your policies? What information is being shared with the teleconferencing company?

• how the teleconferencing complies with more stringent privacy rules like GDPR (Europe), or CCPA (California).

• if solution has reliable encryption?

• that you can keep the video conferencing meetings private by issuing users a password or employing the "waiting room" function, which requires the host to invite each guest individually.

Look for video conferencing features that permit…

• the facilitator to know who is on the call. The group is informed when new person joins or leaves the call.

• changing the passwords and login information for each call

• an audit trail of the users on the call, including the length of the call.

General Tips:

• Ask employees to avoid using a shared device.

• Don't share invitation links on social media.

• Keep software updated to stay on top of any security patches provided by the video conferencing company you choose.

• Do not permit users to sign-in using Facebook or Google – require a unique username and password to sign-in.