How Business Analysts Can Ensure Secure Virtual Meetings With Stakeholders
/The recent pandemic has accelerated digitization worldwide. The primary shift was in remote collaboration. Due to the social distancing norms, every organization had to adopt remote working.
Hence, business analysts and many other professionals now have to conduct virtual meetings. While virtual meetings provide flexibility, they also bring in cybersecurity challenges.
Pandemic and the resulting remote culture have become the perfect bait for cyberattacks. They are leveraging the opportunities to deploy attacks. Hence, the number of cyberattacks has seen a triple-digit increase year on year.
With that said, business analysts need to ensure secure virtual meetings. So, if you don’t know how to enhance the security of virtual meetings, it’s high time to learn. Here are some tips you can consider.
Verify Everyone’s Identity
If you think there’s no need to verify identity since you are meeting with your company’s stakeholders, think again. A fraudster can become a part of your meeting by using deepfakes.
Deepfake refers to using technologies like AI to create synthetic content. Once a part of the meeting, the fraudster can gather sensitive data and use it illegally.
Suppose a fraudster accesses the financial information of the company through the meeting. Later, the person can use the information to connect with the accounts team and ask to transfer funds.
You can use digital identity verification solutions to fight deepfakes. These solutions are equipped with Artificial Intelligence (AI), biometrics, and Near Field Communication (NFC) capabilities to detect deepfakes. One such robust platform to identify synthetic content is au10tix.com. You can use its API to integrate with your web conferencing platform. With the API integrated, you can detect synthetic content within seconds. Hence, it helps ensure that the attendee is the one he or she claims to be.
Follow A Zero Trust Model
Even though you are communicating with stakeholders, don’t trust blindly. Zero Trust is a cybersecurity model that promotes authenticating everyone.
Whether you are from within the company’s network or an outsider, you need to authenticate yourself. Applying this model will create a defense line so that only genuine stakeholders join the virtual meeting.
You can also use multi-factor authentication by creating and sharing one-time passwords. Besides login details, stakeholders should also provide one-time passwords to join. Endeavour to share passwords at the last minute so that the cyber attackers don’t have time to steal the information.
Moreover, don’t allow any unknown numbers to be a part of the meeting. If the unknown number claims to be a stakeholder, ask for verification. You can use identity verification here as well.
Lock Calls After Everyone Joins
Imagine you have completed your presentation for a new product. Suddenly, an unknown number joins the virtual meeting, collects the information, and exits. You can prevent this by locking the calls. Once everyone you have invited to the call has joined, lock the room so that no one else can enter.
Record the Meetings Only When Necessary
Recording your meetings is a big no as it increases the chances of information leakage. When you record a meeting, your web conferencing platform might store it. If someone attacks the platform’s servers, your data will be leaked. Hence, it is advised not to record online meetings especially where the information captured is sensitive.
Since you are communicating with stakeholders, the chances are that it might be essential to record the meeting. In that case, you can record and share the conference with a few considerations:
The first thing is to encrypt the recording before sharing.
Secondly, delete the recording from the web conferencing platform once you have shared it. Following these two tips will reduce the chances of data leaks significantly.
You should also consider not chatting in live meetings. Chats might be stored by the conferencing platform and lead to leaks. Besides, it also increases the chances of malware deployment. For instance, if you enable chatting, a threat adversary can share a malware file in the chat. If any stakeholder downloads and runs that file, their system will be compromised.
Conclusion
Cyberattacks are on the rise. Hence, you need to do everything possible to secure your organization. If you think that cybersecurity is a security expert’s job, it can lead to disastrous consequences. The employees of a company are the first line of defense against any cyber threat.
That is why you need to educate yourself about cybersecurity and follow all the best practices to ensure optimal security. By following the tips mentioned while conducting an online meeting with stakeholders, you can keep fraud or data breach at bay.
