Using Webex: Securing Webex Meetings

Overview

Courses, office hours, and meetings should be kept secure when meeting online. Following best practices will ensure that Webex meetings are attended only by the intended people.

Details

All hosts of any Webex meeting should be certain to follow these best practices in order to ensure that the meeting is secured.

• Do not provide your Audio PIN to anyone
  Sharing the hosts's audio PIN could result in unexpected attendees hijacking the session's audio.
  
  
• Password protect all meetings
  Meetings which are open to the public can potentially be discovered and attended by random people. Enabling a password for your meeting will ensure that only those users with the password are able to attend.
  
  Passwords should be complex, and should not be reused from meeting to meeting. Every meeting should have a unique password.
  
  
• Provide meeting passwords only to users who need them
  If a password is posted publicly, or forwarded via email, any recipient will be able to attend the meeting. Do not post your meeting information in a public location. This includes public web pages, or attached to publicly accessible videos (Youtube, or Mediasite videos which do not require authentication). If you maintain a publicly accessible web site for your class, do not post the meeting information. Always provide meeting information either through a class authenticated LMS (Canvas or Blackboard) page, or via email.
  
  
• Ensure your meeting is unlisted
  Deselect "Listed on Public Calendar" on the Schedule a Meeting page in order to remove your meeting from a publicly searchable list of meetings. This will hide the meeting, and prevent it from being randomly discovered. If a meeting is listed publicly, and does not have a password set, it can be accessed by anyone who happens to find it.
  
  Marking your meeting as unlisted will require that you provide all attendees with a unique meeting number in order to join your meeting.
  
  
• Require attendees to have an RCS enabled account on Webex
  For classes and other meetings which are comprised of RPI attendees, in your scheduling settings check the box for "Require attendees to have an account on this site in order to join this meeting". This will ensure that no outside attendees can gain access to the meeting.
  
  
• Lock your meeting
  If your meeting has a specific starting time, lock your meeting in order to prevent any additional attendees from entering the meeting. This will work best in smaller meetings with a known group of attendees. A meeting may be unlocked briefly to allow additional attendees to enter.

References/Links

For more detailed information and additional security measures, please see the article Cisco Webex Best Practices for Secure Meetings: Hosts provided on the Cisco Webex Help Center.

For a single sheet reference of highlights, please see the attached PDF file: Secure your Webex meetings.

Last Reviewed:  28-April-2020