Your video conferencing equipment can be actually used by hackers to spy your virtual meetings. Luckily, it is quite easy to secure your systems and stop intrusions. Let’s see how
Security is that kind of issue that must never be underestimated. According to the security researchers of the team of Rapid 7 (https://blog.rapid7.com/2012/01/23/video-conferencing-and-self-selecting-targets/ ), there are some vulnerabilities in video conferencing systems that can be exploited by hackers in order to listen to participants’ conversations, read the documents that are shared during a conference, and even steal the passwords that participants would possibly digit to access a program or a file on their desktops.
Why are web conferences so vulnerable? First reason, the lack of firewall in many web connections. Second reason, your equipment is usually configured to automatically answer incoming video calls.
How to solve these two issues? First step, put andenable a firewall between the Internet and the LAN of your organization. Video conferencing solutions like R-HUB`s TurboMeeting (http://www.rhubcom.com) are expressly designed to be used together with your firewalls. If you utilize properly this kind of video conferencing tools, you should not have any problem either in terms of security or bad receptions of the calls through the net.
Another advantage of TurboMeeting servers is that they are self-installing and self-configuring, and they can be easily integrated with your existing systems. The directions given are quite simple and you should be able to follow them even if you are not an IT expert.
The second step is to properly configure your firewalls and your video conferencing equipment, so that they do not answer automatically any incoming video call. The best solution is to set your system on “mute” (not in auto- answer).
It is necessary that someone press a button to start up the reception of any incoming call that way. Special care must be devoted to the configuration of the port of the firewall that is devoted to video calls, as a mistake here can create a vulnerability that could be immediately exploited by hackers. You’d better spend some money and call in a specialized technician to have this kind of job done, instead of trying to set the firewall port yourself. “You buy cheap, you buy twice”, they say.
Last, it is also helpful to unplug your system and cover up the cameras when they are not in use. A switched-off machine cannot be utilized by any hacker, even if its software leaks; the same consideration is applicable to covered-up cameras. This is the reason why it is better to place and keep the pcs for video-conferencing in a devoted room, and ask your team to video conference only through some few special pcs and not from their own ones. Naturally, enforcing the last suggestion implies that your team is trained to respect some few security standards and rules.
In conclusion, securing your company’s video conferences is quite easy and affordable, on the condition to use the right technology and to train your team adequately. On the other hand, affairs like Panama papers have taught us all how dangerous data leaks can be. So, learn the lesson!