Anytime, anywhere video collaboration can reduce costs, improve productivity and enhance relationships. However, as you move to implement a video conferencing system, be sure to take some common sense precautions to ensure the security of your system. Just as whiteboards or flipcharts can be easily seen by someone entering the room after a meeting concludes, so too can these images be captured by a video conferencing camera capture and seen by remote participants who dial into the room. By taking advantage of your video conferencing system’s settings and security features and implementing appropriate firewall solutions can help ensure that the meeting material you want to remain private remains private.
Many of today’s room-based video conferencing systems can be set to automatically answer a call as it is received. While this convenient feature makes it easy for novice users, it could potentially allow unintended audiences to listen in. To prevent this, there are some simple precautions to take so that the room can remain secure and private when necessary:
- Most systems with the auto-answer feature also can be configured to automatically mute the microphones when the call connects. This means that if someone dials into the room when their presence is not desired, they will not be able to hear anything until someone unmutes the microphone.
- The systems typically can also be set to “Do Not Disturb” so that the system will temporarily not answer any incoming calls. This is especially useful when the room is used not just for video conferences, but also local meetings.
- When designing a video conferencing system, if you are setting the displays to automatically go into a sleep state when no video signal is present, set them to automatically turn on when a call begins. Otherwise, people in front of the system may be in a call, but not know it.
By their very nature, video conferencing systems are networked devices. Serious consideration should be given to their security features as well as the network services they support. Most have built-in web servers for administration. Some have built-in ftp servers for software upgrades. Knowing what your system is capable of is critical to securing it on the network.
Over the last several years, video conferencing has gone beyond internal communications. Businesses that leverage the medium often wish to communicate with partners, supply-chain and even customers. To achieve your B2B objective while still maintaining security, it’s best to implement an industry-recognized, standards-based firewall traversal solution. Organizations that install the systems on the public internet with an exposed IP address for receiving calls open themselves to attack.
Multiparty video conferences have one major benefit over multiparty audio conferences in that it is considerably easier to recognize who is in a meeting and if there are any participants who should not be there. Even so, most MultiPoint Control Units (MCUs) include the ability to request a PIN or meeting number before the participant can join the call. This also helps assure security when audio participants are permitted to join multiparty video conferences, as these participants are not visible.
Lastly, most manufactures make administrator documentation readily available for their customers. This means that default password and login items can be easily determined through a simple web search. Changing default login items and addressing password security is as important for a video conferencing system as it is for other devices on the network.
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