There may soon be even more good reasons to behave on your work calls in Microsoft Teams after a new update was released for the platform designed to weed out troublemakers.
The video conferencing tool is working on a new feature that will allow administrators to permanently ban a user from a workspace or organization.
The tool is primarily intended as a cybersecurity safeguard, but could also help weed out users who abuse the platform or block those who have left a company and may still want to access the platform for nefarious purposes.
Microsoft Teams Blocks
In the Microsoft 365 roadmap post describing the feature, the company points out that the current delete API for Teams does not prevent a user from resending a message to someone, potentially meaning the risk still exists.
However, the platform will now extend its block API to allow administrators to prevent a user from ever contacting it again. Microsoft will also look to use a similar feature to the current allow/block list to prevent malicious users from accessing the entire organization – essentially locking them out forever.
The feature is currently listed as in development, with a planned rollout start date of October 2024. Once released, it will be available to Microsoft Teams users on Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.
Microsoft Teams itself has remained a relatively safe platform for users, despite its popularity in workplaces around the world, where people are often a bit lax when it comes to online protection.
However, there were also some security concerns: In June 2023, researchers discovered a way to inject malware into an organization’s network from a Teams account by exploiting the ability of an organization’s Microsoft Teams client to accept messages from “external tenants” – that is, those using Teams accounts from outside the company.
Later, in July 2023, Microsoft released a major security update for Teams that included complete end-to-end protection and an improved experience for IT administrators and security operations (SecOps) staff.
Security teams are now notified when users report suspicious messages and have the option to block or quarantine potential risks and view them in the Microsoft 365 Defender portal.
