Months after the announcement, Microsoft has released end-to-end encryption for all Microsoft Teams users. All Teams desktop users can now experience secure communication. Web-version users, however, still have to wait.
Microsoft Teams End-to-End Encryption Rolls Out
Through a recent blog post, Microsoft has confirmed the public release of end-to-end encryption for Microsoft Teams.
The Redmond giant first announced this move earlier this year. In June, Microsoft released e2e encryption as a technical preview for Teams users.
And now, after going through a public preview, Microsoft has finally released e2ee for Teams as ‘generally available.’ It means that all Microsoft Teams users can now enjoy secure one-to-one chats via Teams without worrying about interception.
According to John Gruszczyk, Technical Product Manager at Microsoft, IT admins can now enable this option for their companies after receiving the update.
Elaborating more about this feature, Gruszczyk stated,
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.
During end-to-end encrypted calls, several features of Teams otherwise available will be disabled. These include call merge, call park, call transfer, recording, live caption and transcription, and adding members to one-to-one calls.
The new feature is available with the latest releases of Microsoft Teams desktop clients for Windows and Mac. However, web users may still not be able to use this feature.
With this step, Microsoft Teams has enhanced its chances to emerge as a leading business communications platform offering thorough privacy. Earlier, Zoom introduced end-to-end encryption to the app following its surge in userbase in the post-COVID19 scenario.
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