Risks of Video Conferencing – Steps, Best Practices to Continue Investment in Security

by Rob Porter

December 19, 2022

A Couple of Quick Tips for High-Consequence Virtual Meeting Environments

Recently, we discussed some of the pitfalls inherent in virtual meetings in the remote work era as well as tips to help meeting organizers and participants take advantage of the security features built into virtual meeting platforms.

In this post, we’ll take a deeper dive into the best practices network admins and IT security should follow to maximize virtual meeting security across the organization.

What does “high consequence” mean for you?

CoSo Cloud specializes in video conferencing solutions for “high consequence” industries, including government agencies like the Department of Defense and
regulated industries like healthcare and financial services. In these environments, breaches can lead to fines, legal action, and even loss of life.

Even if you’re not dealing with virtual meetings with national security consequences or the threat of fines, the concept of high consequence can be a helpful way to think about scenarios where a breach or leak of information could threaten your business. Many virtual meetings are high-consequence and should be handled with the appropriate level of security to safeguard your organization.

Tip #1: Use a compliant platform even if you’re not obligated

The most straightforward way to safeguard the virtual meetings that are high consequence to you is to use a platform that already meets strict regulatory requirements for a high-consequence industry. For example, it may seem excessive to use a platform rated to protect financial and national security details from breaches to secure “lower consequence” virtual meetings—but if they contain information that threatens the welfare of your organization, they are just as important.

However, this is also the most expensive solution and should be used in a targeted approach for your business-critical virtual meetings. For example, you may not need a polar-rated jacket to go to the grocery store, but it might be nice to have on a winter camping trip.

Tip #2: Add high-security features to your existing platform

Sometimes a polar jacket really is overkill, and you can achieve a similar effect with a clever use of layers. Layering in the same features that help compliant platforms meet regulatory requirements can help shore up security for your most important, but not regulated, virtual meetings.

While there is a limit to a cloud customer’s control over the security of the cloud vendors they work with, there are steps you can take to ensure you’re getting all your cloud vendor has to offer. Make it clear that security is a priority for your virtual meetings and set up features, including multi-factor authentication, ideally including physical security components like smartcards and tokens.