Microsoft Teams Enhancing Meeting Controls and Security
The world saw a spike in online meeting usage in the last month, so with that also came headlines of security and best practices. Many believe the security breaches were due to new users adopting the software so quickly and not enabling the already in place security features. Regardless of the why, Microsoft has decided to sure up the security of the already secure Microsoft Teams by adding several new meeting controls and security features.
One of the new features coming in Teams is a default to lobby for external and phone audio meeting joiners. Today, the lobby function is disabled by default and per meeting, organizers can choose to enable it in meeting options. Each Microsoft Teams meeting has a unique complex URL, so the likelihood of random external people finding the meeting and joining is pretty low. Even so, Microsoft is changing the global default to put external meeting attendees into the lobby and having a meeting organizer admit them. Admins will be able to change this setting in the global Teams meeting policies.
There will also be an option added to set a default policy for who can present in Teams meetings. The default now is that anyone and everyone can present. Tenant admins will now be able to set a new default policy for who can present. The default value is set to “everyone” but can be updated via PowerShell by an admin.
Microsoft Teams will be able to hide phone audio joiners phone numbers from appearing to other external users. In the Microsoft Teams organization/internal users can see the full phone numbers of meeting attendees joining via phone audio conferencing. In a new update, external users will now only see the first 2 and last 2 digits of the phone number of the participant.
The last Microsoft Teams change being rolled out is to block a user from changing their profile picture. Both Teams web and desktop experience now recognize the Outlook on the web mailbox policy setting that controls whether users can change their profile pictures. Configured by tenant admin, this policy setting helps tenants promote a safer work or school environment by preventing inappropriate content from being used in profile pictures. If the -setPhotoEnabled parameter is turned off (set to $false) in the policy, users can’t add, change, or remove their profile pictures.
2W Tech is a Microsoft Gold Partner and has IT Consultants on staff that specialize in Microsoft 365 solutions. Give us a call today to learn how Microsoft Teams can help increase your teams social collaboration during COVID-19.
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