Zoom-Bombing and Cyber-Hacking: Here’s How to Protect Yourself
Your hands aren’t the only thing you need to keep clean during the coronavirus pandemic
By Elizabeth Laura Nelson
When the coronavirus (COVID-19) first began its rampage across our world, one of the first things to happen was that people suddenly became hyper-aware of their personal hygiene. “Wash your hands!” is the rallying cry of this pandemic, as we all strive to avoid becoming sick or unwittingly spreading the virus.
But now that many of us are working, teaching, and attending classes from home, another kind of hygiene has become extremely important as well: cyber hygiene. Following best practices to keep our home computers up-to-date and secure will ensure that we’re able to continue with our work and educational obligations for the duration of the stay-at-home order.
Touro Graduate School of Technology professors and cybersecurity experts Behrooz Khorsandi and Yosef Lehrman are on the front lines when it comes to the technical side of this crisis; we spoke to them about how we can protect ourselves from becoming victims of cyber-hacking, Zoom-bombing, and other online hazards.
Controlling access
“Someone was presenting his PhD thesis a couple of weeks ago on Zoom, and apparently a ‘Zoom bomb’ was issued, which caused his session to be compromised,” says Khorsandi. “It was a very embarrassing moment for this individual, in front of his professors and other faculty members,” said Khorsandi.
One way to keep your Zoom meetings secure, says Lehrman, is to make sure you never post the link in a public forum. “Anyone who has the link can access the conference,” he explains. “Obviously, this poses a problem.” He recommends posting meeting links only in controlled environments, as opposed to social media feeds or public web pages.
Another thing people can do is make their Zoom meetings password-protected. “This is a mechanism to control who has access to the online forum,” says Lehrman. Guests are sent to a Zoom “waiting room” until the host lets them into the meeting (or classroom). Once in the meeting, guests should not be allowed to share their screens. “Screen-sharing should be limited to the host or instructor,” says Lehrman.
Putting a policy in place
Khorsandi and Lehrman emphasize that there will always be a trade-off when it comes to security and user-friendliness. “How easy do you want to make it for students or emplo
The answer to the accessibility/security conundrum, Khorsandi and Lehrman believe, lies in having a solid telework or distance learning policy in place. “I would make the policy number one, before anything else can be done,'' says Khorsandi. “Employees, instructors, and students need to know the agreed-upon policy by the organization or institution.” He suggests an email or short training session to go over the policy and make sure people understand the importance of information security. “The key idea is communication in regards to policies—what's permitted and what's not.”yees to access meetings and material, in light of the possible implications of compromise?” asks Khorsandi. “If it’s too difficult for the users, they’ll figure out a way around security restrictions.”
Khorsandi recommends giving step-by-step instructions to users, to make it easier for them. “Go to this particular website, click on this link, download this application, install it, this is what you'll see. Give users a framework to understand whether they're doing the right thing, and that they're not unwittingly causing some sort of problem that could result in network compromise.”
Fundamentally, the most important component of keeping online connections secure is making sure the machines used to connect have adequate firewalls and virus protection installed and enabled, and are running up-to-date software, say Khorsandi and Lehrman.
Staying up-to-date
“If the initial computer is compromised, then anything that's on that computer can be compromised,” says Lehrman. “Whether it's through tricking the user into installing some malicious software on the machine, or a phishing email, that can become an entry point into the corporate environment.”
Both instructors urge people to keep their internet browsers updated—no matter which one they use. “Chrome has the largest market share, but it doesn’t matter which browser you use, as long as it’s one of the modern ones: Edge, Safari, Firefox. Obviously no one should be running Internet Explorer anymore,” says Lehrman.
Keeping things clean
Khorsandi and Lehrman stress that the cyber hygiene best practices they’re outlining here are not new to this particular era—just like frequent handwashing is not a new discovery in the fight against contagious disease.
“Corona has brought [these issues] to the forefront, because now people are using their home computers to connect to school or work. But it's nothing different, from our perspective, to these things that should really be done all the time,” says Khorsandi. “It’s really just basic cyber security.”
The bottom line? Basic hygiene can help in the fight against coronavirus, and basic cyber hygiene can help keep you safe online. So wash your hands, update your browsers, and stay safe out there.
Behrooz Khorsandi and Yosef Lehrman are just two of the many experts in their fields who teach at Touro’s Graduate School of Technology. Want to find out more about what Touro GST could do for you? Contact us today
Building the next generation of technology leaders, today.
The Touro College Graduate School of Technology provides its students a top-notch education, with competitive tuition and personalized attention in mind. For more information about our three industry-driven Master's degree programs, visit our next Open House (application fee will be waived).
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
YouTube