Microsoft Teams – Security

Team’s lets you communicate collaborate & share content across your business giving you manageability whilst working remotely, but how secure is the data within teams & what can be done to keep the data secure? Below we are going to the look at how to keep data in Teams Secure.

With Teams being a Microsoft product, it inherits a lot of Microsoft 365 Security standards. Teams is made up of Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint Online & One Note (along with other applications) that builds the super tool, so it uses security elements of each of those services.

Accessing Teams

The first security aspects teams gives is the ability to have team/organisation wide two factor authentication and single sign on through Active Directory. Multi Factor Authentication in-particular is a free service which gives that extra layer of security. The data sent within team is encrypted in both transit & rest, so you will be pleased to know that internal communications/data is being kept safe.

Conditional access can be applied to Microsoft Teams as it is treated/supported as its own cloud application in Azure Active Directory. This means that policies can be applied for when users directly sign into Microsoft Teams. Policies could be restricting access to a user’s location, IP Address, or device. This prevents data being accessed from anywhere. Teams however is a well-connected application so if you are going to apply conditional access to restrict users access you may also want to apply those policies to Exchange Online & SharePoint Online. For further security, policies can be applied directly on users.

The Teams application supports modern authentication also for both Windows & MAC. The desktop application also supports AppLocker.

Teams File Storage

The file storage in teams is one of the most key elements when it comes to security as where does your data go? You will be pleased to know that the files saved in teams are stored in SharePoint which is backed by encryption! As above the data sent within teams is both encrypted at rest & in transit. Notes made are stored within One Note which is again backed by encryption. This OneNote data is stored in the team SharePoint site. The Wiki within your Team – often used for Project outlines and note taking is stored again within the SharePoint site.

Microsoft Teams supports advance threat protection (ATP) along with SharePoint/One Drive for Business. ATP detects malicious content within those applications & blocks access to it from users. Once blocked the files are managed depending on the settings configured within Office 365 administrator policy. One strong recommendation would be to get this applied to all applications above to keep data safe!

Attachments

The safety of attachments is designed to enhance user security as it detects anything malicious being received. Policies are then configured by your administrator to determine what happens with the suspected attachment to prevent users having access to them. This prevents malware being spread across your environment and destroying data. This does require an additional licence (Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection Plan 1 or 2), but protection can be applied to Microsoft Teams, One Drive for Business & SharePoint. It is easy to spread malware across all those applications so it is something worth investing into to keep your data safe.

There are many more policies in which can be applied to keep the data secure, but I just wanted to highlight some of the main features. To learn about Microsoft Compliance standards, take a look at my follow up article.

If you’d like to discuss any of the above please contact a member of the team on 01925838386 or drop us an email on [email protected].