The ability to conference or meet with another person, team, or entire group of people who are located across town or across the globe is truly impressive. The advent of web conferencing is a fairly recent event, when looking at the context of history.

Internet conferencing technologies in their earliest forms (circa 1985 or so) consisted of simple text-based chat systems that operated across dedicated phone lines, connecting two people with static addresses. However, with the emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web, the technologies grew to encompass more rich media such as voice and video communications.

Today, with the increasing availability of broadband communications in companies and homes, streaming video, high performance application sharing, and comprehensive meeting recording & archiving are now also possible.

If you are researching web conferencing systems for your organization, one of the most important features you should consider has little to do with user experience. Rather, it is the feature of security.

Here are 3 tips about secure web conferencing that you should know:

1. Understand why security matters: It is important to truly grasp the concept of why security should be such an important consideration in your choice of a web conferencing system. The bottom line is this: hackers - both casual and malicious alike - have the ability to "sniff" data running across unprotected networks. In another scenario, individuals who have not been officially invited to an online meeting may choose to invite themselves to join. Given the importance of intellectual property, customer data, and corporate secrets, it is no wonder than companies sit up and take notice when it comes to data security.

2. Know what could go wrong if your chosen system lacks proper security: The range of ways that an organization can be damaged through lack of conferencing security is mind-boggling and far-reaching. Just a few of those ways include: loss of company secrets, leakage of customers' private data, and members within an organization finding out sensitive information about each other or the company that they should never have been exposed to.

3. Understand the basics of secure conferencing: There are a number of aspects to ensuring secure web conferencing. However, they boil down to: the ability to make sure participants are who they say they are before joining an online meeting (user authentication), the ability to protect meeting-related data that is streaming across the Internet or local networks (data encryption), and the ability to manage users' permissions within the organization. Be sure to take each of these into account as you look for secure web conferencing solutions for your organization.

Find out more about secure web conferencing services at: Secure Web Conferencing Advisor.