The NY Times published an article today that is getting a lot of attention in the collaboration community. The article references poor configurations in VTC systems and how they can make your meeting spaces and classrooms vulnerable to eavesdropping and prying eyes. Should you be concerned? Absolutely…but don’t freak out. A few simple config changes like turning auto answer off, changing the default camera preset to to the ceiling and disabling remote control of the camera (called Far End Camera Control (fecc)), and you should be covered for the vulnerabilities referenced in the article. OIT-ITS definitely recommends that you take these steps mentioned to safeguard the privacy of your staff, faculty and students if you have not already done so. Unfortunately, this won’t help you with your Network Security folks and the typical concerns around SSH, TelNet and HTTP access.
If you have any questions on how to implement the configuration changes mentioned, you can contact your systems integrator. If they are not able to help you, please contact OIT-ITS at oit-its-info@duke.edu and we can help you make the changes.
Check out the article here.
