Improve Zoom Security with Authenticated User Setting

For those faculty with concerns about security in their Zoom sessions with students, the Zoom meeting option, "Only authenticated users can join," may be of interest.  If you select this option in your meeting settings, your Zoom session participants will have to log in with their UHCL email address and password to be permitted into the meeting. This takes care of those situations in which "Guest1234" appears in your participant list and you have no idea who that is. As with any new setting change, we recommend that you "test drive" this feature in a short session with several students before an actual whole class meeting. The following information has been excerpted from the Zoom support page, Authentication Profiles for meetings and webinars, which also contains a lot of detailed information for the Zoom system administrators.

Overview

Authentication profiles allow hosts to restrict meeting participants and webinar attendees to logged-in users only and even further restrict it to Zoom users whose email address uses a certain domain. This can be useful if you want to restrict your participant list to verified users, or users from a certain organization.

Authentication profiles do not apply to invited webinar panelists, who will have a unique join link and can be from outside of the specified domain(s).

Note: If a participant does not have a Zoom account, they will not be able to join the meeting or webinar if this setting is enabled.

If a participant tries to join the meeting or webinar and is not logged into Zoom, or logging in with the wrong specified email domain, they will receive one of the following messages:

• If they are not logged into Zoom:

• If they are logged in with the wrong email domain:

Only allow authenticated users to join a meeting or webinar

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.
2. Schedule a meeting or webinar.
3. Under Meeting Options or Webinar Options, click Only authenticated users can join.

If there are multiple Authentication Profiles configured, you can choose the authentication profile from the dropdown. Selecting the UHCL Domain option will force students to log into the Zoom meeting with their UHCL email address and credentials.

Zoom Webinars versus Meetings: Differences and Considerations

NOTE: Much of the following information has been excerpted from our team's new handout, Guide to Zoom Webinars at UHCL.

In addition to the much more common Zoom meeting, Zoom users can also host webinars. For a detailed comparison of meeting and webinar features, please review the Zoom support page, Meeting and webinar comparison. Major areas in which meetings and webinars differ are as follows:

• UHCL Zoom meetings can support a maximum of 300 participants, while Zoom Webinars accommodate up to 1000 people.
• Zoom meetings enable two-way communication between hosts/presenters and the participants via camera, microphone, and in-session text chat. Webinars, on the other hand, are primarily intended for one-way communication from the hosts and panelists to the attendees. Limited communication from attendees to the host is available via only the text-based Q&A tool and/or the text chat.
• Zoom meetings include optional Breakout Rooms during the session and a Waiting Room to control when participants may enter the session. Neither of those is available in a Zoom Webinar. 
• Any UHCL faculty or staff member may schedule and host Zoom Meetings. However, the university owns a limited number of Webinar licenses that must be borrowed by the Webinar host (or hosting campus office) for the specific event.

Planning and conducting a Zoom webinar may seem daunting at first; however, with proper planning and preparation, anyone can host a successful online event! UCT is happy to assist event hosts (and related faculty/staff) with training, planning, and advising for their webinars. To get started, or to simply learn more about hosting a Zoom webinar at UHCL, please begin by reviewing the document, Guide to Zoom Webinars at UHCL. Then, contact the Support Center with your questions, or to schedule your initial planning meeting with a member of our team.