Microsoft Teams Gets End To End Encryption

Two months ago, Microsoft began rolling out support for end-to-end encryption for all Teams calls.  Given the pandemic and the increased demand for Teams and services like it, that was a very big deal.

The good news is that Microsoft recently announced that the rollout is complete and all Teams calls now support E2EE which increases security for everyone.

This is a move that most other virtual meeting clients have already begun to replicate. This is as working from home appears to be a permanent or at least semi-permanent fixture on the corporate landscape. All this is happening as we are still feeling the lingering effects of the pandemic.

If you are a Teams user your IT admin will be able to toggle the E2EE functionality on or off for your business depending on your particular needs and desires.

John Gruszcyk is a Technical Product Manager at Microsoft and he stressed:

“As a reminder, by default end-to-end encryption will not be available to all users within the tenant. 

Once IT has configured the policy and enabled it for selected users, those selected users will still need to turn on end-to-end encryption in their Teams settings. IT retains the ability to disable E2EE for one-to-one Teams calls as necessary.”

If you’re anxious to jump right in and start making use of E2EE for Teams calls you can do so in three easy steps:

• Sign into your Teams Admin center and make your way to Other Settings à Enhanced Encryption Policies
• Give your new policy a name and then for “end to end call encryption” select “Users can turn it on” – then save your selections.
• Finally, once this is done and you’ve finished creating your policy assign it to user groups or your entire tenant the same way you manage other Teams policies.

Kudos to Microsoft for completing what much surely have been a massive undertaking on their end!