Working with zoom information barriers. 

The information barrier is framed to assist the customer’s control of users’ communication policies. This also helps in fulfilling the regulatory prerequisites in order. Besides that as a way of prevention, you can also use the information barriers to stop particular groups of users from sharing sensitive information with others who should be barred from knowing the information. 

From this article, know about prerequisites of information barriers, kinds of blocks in between the groups. Also, know about the information barrier scopes and other essential features. 

 

Preconditions for information barriers. 

 

For turning on the information barriers you at first have to get in touch with the contact support. Other mandatory conditions to enable information barriers are:

• Your zoom desktop client should be at least Windows 4.6.8(19178.0323) or above. In the case of Mac OS, the client version should be above 4.6.8(1978.0323) or above. 
• The precondition of the zoom client for information barrier and breakout room recordings are:

• For windows, the version should be above or at least 5.6.0.
• For Mac OS, the minimum version should be 5.6.0 or above. 

Remember.

• At the time the information barrier gets enabled on your zoom account, the feature called join before host either has to be locked or get immediately disabled for the account level. The setting options can be re-enabled for the admins of the zoom account. However, there are probabilities of getting a break in the information barrier option.
• The primary requirement of the client version for information barrier and breakout rooms recording is 5.6.0 or above. 

 

Conditions for information barriers.

 

There are certain criteria, which you have to fulfill for enabling the information barriers. And those are- 

• The zoom users have to be a member of the zoom group management. Conditions for meetings. 

• The user should be able to zoom sign in. However, the user won’t have the facility to host public meetings. 
• The users from groups along with blocks won’t have an inspection for the sending of local recording files. For instance, when user A without meeting user B has a regular usual chat with the next. He may think of sending a recording file to user B, which the system cannot prevent. 

 

• For chat purposes. When a user wants to invite others by email then Zoom can’t block them. The zoom team can send the notification to the email in the domain. 

• For chat and meeting. The check policy timeout get fails if the basic below events usually occur- 

• The policy server gets domains. 
• The presence of an exception. 
• There is the occasion of network issues. 
• The presence of outages. 
• The presence of client-side issues. 

 

• Follow the below situations- 

• Zoom will take an effort to retrieve the copy of the last synched policy. These are for the chat and meeting conversations. 
• Zoom can apply the policy under the policy server can reach again.
• When the policy server already reaches, and if there’s syncing of the new policy then zoom will take the fresh value. 
• When zoom cannot retrieve the last synced policy’s copy they will by default not permit all organization’s users from entering into the hosted meeting of someone else from taking part in the chat conversation or the domain. 

 

Different block types between the groups. 

 

• The hard block.  The chat or meeting communication consists of users from varied groups. The block in between two users is not permitted by the zoom authority to chat or meet also if they are located in distinct breakout rooms. (For your information, those are tagged by the organization’s information barrier policy).

• The soft block. To the users of a meeting from many groups, the soft block is applied. In case, all the users meet with one another, in them, few users can’t engage with few meeting functionalities where another user is there in the meeting. If the users are from a particular meeting or breakout room, then particular meeting features will get blocked. You can think of applying soft blocks for the below features:

• The in-time meeting chat. 
• The in-time meeting file transfer. 
• The screen sharing feature. 
• The local or cloud recording. 

The information barriers scope. 

 

Policy Sync. 

 

The information barriers policies will get coordinated as well as set up for Zoom Web API and through the Web settings by zoom account admins. 

• The Zoom Web UI. 

The Zoom account admins have set up the information barrier policies and groups manually assigned from the web portal. 

Step 1. To have the privilege of editing the account settings, you have to sign in to the Zoom web portal.

Step 2. Tap on advanced from the navigation menu.

Step 3. Tap on the information barriers. 

•  From the web settings, If you want to manually assign users to the group, you must have the discretion of the account administrators. 
• From each of the user groups, the web settings have to permit admins to have a check on the policies. 

 

• Zoom API. 

• To zoom, you can send the information barrier policies through organizations from respective third-party systems. 
• The zoom web portal will have the last renowned sync policies. 
• Within every twenty-four hours, the organizations can have the sync policies. 

 

Zoom meeting. 

• When the users enter the zoom meeting, the policies about information barriers will be applied to them. 
• Per hard block policies restricting group-level communication will be followed. 
• Per soft block policies based on zoom meeting functionalities will be followed. 
• All the participants in the zoom meeting will have applicable restrictive policies and it would belong to multiple groups. 
• The policies based on local or cloud recordings-

• The cloud recording policies. Most of the zoom meetings consist of users from multiple groups. Though all users can indeed meet with one another, few of the users cannot progress cloud recording when the next user exists in the meeting. When the users are present in the particular meeting that could block the cloud recording. 

• Local Recording. Most of the zoom meetings consist of users from multiple groups. Though all users can indeed meet with one another there will be some users who won’t be able to initiate the local recording with other users who are present in the meeting. When users are from the same meeting then they could block the local recording. 

 

The zoom chat. 

• When users are the participant of multiple groups then those policies will be applied as per the primary group. 
• Those policies are only created in between the existing groups.

 

Shortcomings of Information Barriers. 

• The information barriers won’t be applicable for the external meetings. 
• The cloud recording links then also be created when the meeting is being recorded. 
• There won’t be a support base for custom streaming through RTMP. This is for the host’s decision not to stream the information meeting. At the same time, there won’t be any barriers for the viewers of the stream. 
• The feature of joining before the host is also not favored, the following setting feature gets either locked or turned off. At the time the information barrier is enabled. This restricts the event when the hosts are not permitted to their meeting when they get blocked with another user and when the next user joins the meeting earlier than the host. 
• At the same time, the webinar and zoom phone are also not supported. And only the chatting and zoom meeting feature is supported. 
• The enabled information barrier will also enable as well as lock the only authenticated users who can join meetings. In case the authentication settings get enabled then zoom admins can permit authentication exceptions for allowing the guests to bypass the join meetings authentication. 

 

The features of information barriers. 

The primary group-based information barriers policy- 

When a user is a member of several groups, then the information barrier policy for each of those groups will apply to the primary group where they are active. The information barrier portal will display the pop-up message from the information barrier portal, which shows the impact in the primary groups. 

With the means of API and SAML, you can add or remove users or can create a group by the means of an enabled information barrier. At the time of the enabled information barrier, all other sorts of group manipulation get disabled. The Group settings can also be modified via the web portal of zoom. 

However, 

The primary groups have to be executed for the features. And at the same time, the AOI and SAML approaches are necessary for identifying the users or mapping the primary groups. 

 

Here’s how one can view the primary group information. 

 

For viewing the primary group information, you have to follow the below steps- 

Step 1.  To have the privilege of editing the account settings, you have to sign in to the Zoom web portal.

Step 2. After visiting the navigation menu section, tap on the user management followed by the group management. 

Step 3. You have to select the applicable group names from the long list. 

Step 4. Tap on the profile tab.

Step 5. Below the member section, you have to tap on the link of the total member’s number. 

The primary group column will also show you if in case the group is the primary group for any of the listed users. 

 

Steps for enabling manual group manipulation. 

If you are acting the role of account admin or owner, then you can anytime enable the group manipulation, helping in yo modify the user’s group manually without the help or use of my APIs or for that matter, the SAML. When your zoom account enables the API for syncing groups, then it will get replaced by the manual configuration. 

However, the following changes in the setting are exclusive and solely for the account level. 

 

In order to edit or manually enable the policies for information barriers, follow the method: 

Step 1.   To have the privilege of editing the account settings, you have to sign in to the Zoom web portal.

Step 2. Visit the navigation menu and then go to the account management followed by the account settings. 

Step 3. Following that, you have to tap on the meeting tab. 

Step 4. Below the admin options, tap on the allow account admins to edit groups with an information barrier toggle. This will help you to enable it. 

Step 5. When a dialog box in the name of verification appears, just tap on the enable option which will verify the changes. 

 

Basic criteria for enabling the information barrier policies for the breakout rooms. 

It is only when the information barrier feature gets enabled, that you can use the breakout rooms. It will permit you for the breakout sessions at the time of barring sensitive data from further getting shared. In extension to that, for those accounts where the new admin experience gets enabled, there the information barriers from the user’s primary group will get applicable. 

 

All credit: zoom.us

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360040913711-Using-Information-Barriers