Zoombombing No More? New Zoom Password and Waiting Room Requirements

Zoom recently changed their default settings. The changes may help reduce zoombombing and, possibly, address multiple states’ — and the feds’ — inquiries into their cybersecurity. If you are heading into a week filled with emails and Zoom work meetings, here are a few tips to help understand the recent changes because you may need to take action to update your account.

What Changed?

Here’s a weekend update from Zoom:

Zoom will enable the Waiting Room feature and require additional password settings for all Basic users on free accounts and accounts with a single licensed user, including K-12 education accounts who have the 40-minute limit temporarily waived. The new password requirements apply to both meetings and webinars.

Zoom Support

Let’s take those two changes — enabling the Waiting Room feature and requiring additional password settings — one at a time.

1. Enabling The Waiting Room Feature

This feature already existed within Zoom. With the recent changes, it will be automatically enabled. Please view the video below to learn what the Waiting Room is and how to manage it.

Enabling the waiting room feature proactively manages who is able to join a meeting. What happens if you would like to remove a participant — whether permanently or, perhaps, temporarily (#PoorJennifer!)— after they have already joined? To learn how to accomplish this, watch Zoom’s extended overview of the platform’s advanced settings for meetings.

2. Additional Password Settings

Prior to the recent changes, many meetings did not require passwords. Now, passwords are required. For new meetings created after April 5th, it is possible no further action is needed on your part. Though you can turn the feature off, Zoom automatically encodes passwords into new Zoom meeting invitation links when you create your meetings. For meetings created before April 5th, Zoom retroactively automatically assigned passwords. You may be wondering: “Hey, what’s the password for the meeting?” You can check and change meeting passwords — and access the Waiting Room feature — by editing your meeting in Zoom, as show in the video below.

We hope this information is useful to you in your work. We also hope Zoom’s changes will help reduce zoombombing. If you or your organization have any questions or need assistance with digital, please give us a shout.