Sent to U-M deans, directors, and department heads through email on March 31, 2020.
We have been hearing concerns about "Zoombombing," in which people use Zoom's screen sharing feature to share inappropriate and disuptive content like pornography or violent or racist imagery. While we have not seen instances of this at U-M, we are reaching out proactively to help members of the university community protect their remote meetings.
Zoom includes a number of settings and features that meeting hosts can use to protect their meeting participants from Zoombombing and to protect their privacy. ITS provides guidance for securing your Zoom meetings, as well as protecting privacy on all of our videoconferencing tools, on our website:
If you plan to use Zoom as a medium for instruction we encourage you to look into Zoom webinars, which are designed so that only the host, co-host, and any designated panelists can share their video, audio, and screen. Faculty members who are teaching courses have already been provisioned access for Zoom webinars and can access them at zoom.umich.edu.
Please share this with others in your unit as appropriate. We have also shared this information with U-M’s security community and other IT professionals, as well as posted a notice on the Safe Computing website at IA Notice: Protect your Zoom meetings against Zoombombing. If you see an instance of Zoombombing at U-M, please report it to [email protected].
As our community expands its use of videoconferencing and other remote tools, we are uncovering new questions and responding to new challenges on a regular basis. I am grateful for your partnership through this time of rapid change, and I encourage you to continue to reach out if you have any questions or concerns.
Best regards,
Ravi
Ravi Pendse, PhD
Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer
University of Michigan
[email protected]