Zoom’s video conferencing platform announced this week that all user accounts can now benefit from improved security, courtesy of Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) support.
Users should be safe from security breaches with 2FA allowed on their accounts, including those that come from the Zoom platform itself, the company claims.
For 2FA, Zoom supports authentication applications that use a Time-Based One-Time Password (TOTP) protocol (such as Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, and FreeOTP), but may also deliver authentication codes via SMS or phone calls.
2FA, says Zoom, should provide better protection for all companies using its network by reducing the risk of identity fraud and breaches, should ensure enforcement when it comes to the security of confidential data and consumer information, and should minimise costs associated with the use of the Single Sign On (SSO) system.
The new security layer will prevent bad actors from breaching accounts by merely guessing passwords and can also make it easier to handle passwords, says the video conference platform.
“Zoom provides a number of authentication methods such as SAML, OAuth, and/or password-based authentication that can be allowed or disabled individually for an account,” the company said.
Account administrators looking to allow 2FA should sign in to the Zoom Dashboard, go to the Advanced menu section of the Security section and make sure that the option “Sign in with Two-Factor Authentication” is allowed.
They can then either enable 2FA for all users in the account, enable it for users with specific roles (they can also select the targeted roles), or allow it for users in specific groups (they need to select the groups). The last move is to save the settings with 2FA.
