New Zoom Allow List and Deny List - Available Now
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. Or so the phrase goes.
We’ve all watched as the COVID-19 pandemic has created a seismic shift in how we all live, work, and play. One specific hero (and casualty) has been the videoconferencing platform, Zoom.
Almost overnight, Zoom went from delivering services to Enterprise customers with full IT support, at around 10 Million daily users, to more than 200 million daily meeting participants, from all walks of life. This was wholly caused by the fact that Zoom opened up their platform to help our global society move to a remote work from home, teach and learn from home, and interact from home, reality.
This explosion in use uncovered some…er…”opportunities” within the Zoom platform (to say the least) dealing with privacy and security. So while they are busy cleaning their house, we thought that we’d make it easy for our customers who want to use Zoom, or those who don’t want to use Zoom, to do so in an easy, automated, SECURE, and scalable way.
To be clear (and this is a completely unsolicited endorsement), Zoom rocks. We use it here at Threater. It is easy to use, scalable, and has lots of really cool features. For those of us who work remotely full-time, it allows us to see and be seen by our colleagues and coworkers. Its sharing feature allows us to collaborate on projects in real time (or my boss to micromanage me when i’m trying to write an email). It also allows us to judge each other’s decorating skills (I mean! I would never!). Recently, we hosted our first ever virtual happy hour. One of the cool Zoom features is the ability to upload “virtual backgrounds.” Never missing an opportunity for a challenge, we at Threater created an award for the “Best Zoom Conferencing Background.”
How to Enable Threater’s Blacklist and Whitelist
Threater has created both a new Whitelist and Blacklist that is now available to all customers via our SaaS-based Global Management Center. When activated, these lists will differentiate actual Zoom traffic from fraudulent traffic, or if desired, block Zoom video conferencing traffic altogether. Here’s how to get started.
By default, these lists are not enabled. You can enable them via GMC using the Blacklist and Whitelist menu options respectively, and select the “Enabled” radio button.
One thing to note. As mentioned, we use Zoom here at Threater. This includes our customer support calls. So in the event that your organization decides to block Zoom in your network, please note that considerations will need to be made for future support interactions.
We hope that you and your team are safe, healthy, and adjusting. We here at Threater want you to know that we are committed to helping you protect your network by Making Threat Intelligence Actionable…and your team becoming perhaps a little closer now that there is actual video showing the less “professional” sides of our lives.
If you have any questions, please contact us via the support center or call our support team at 1-855-765-4925 ext. 2.
Be Well,
Alex Jones
Data Scientist/ Program Manager