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| Microsoft Teams supports personal call encryption |
The software giant has announced full support for end-to-end E2EE encryption for individual Microsoft Teams calls. Two months ago, on October 21, the company began rolling out E2EE public connectivity support.
New jobs are now available in client companies. IT administrators can enable it for their organization after receiving the update.
“Many enterprise customers in the United States and Europe, including aviation, manufacturing, communications, and professional services, are purchasing E2EE to make platform calls,” said John Groszyk, Microsoft Technology Product Manager.
He added, “Not all users of enterprise clients can use end-to-end encryption by default. After the IT department configures and activates policies for specific users, those specific users must continue to activate end-to-end encryption in the platform settings. The IT department maintains Information reserves the right to deactivate E2EE for individual calls if necessary.
Once the new feature is available (disabled by default), IT administrators can enable it for their entire organization or only for certain user groups.
Company officials have warned that some features will not be available when using E2EE in a single call from Microsoft Teams.
This includes recording, real-time annotation, transcription, call retention, call merging, call forwarding to another device, and adding participants to create conference calls.
If unavailable functions are required, the user must deactivate E2EE.
The company noted in an October blog post that real-time video and audio are protected by E2EE. But chatting or file sharing is not protected. They are protected by other encryption protocols (such as HTTPS) while silent and in transit to ensure secure communication between the device and the website.
Officially, the E2EE feature can be used in the latest version of the desktop application for the Windows or Mac platform.
Now available to all Microsoft Teams users
In other breaking news from Microsoft Times, the company will launch its new Teams Phone product with a calling plan on January 1, 2022.
This new plan combines Microsoft 365 Business Voice with the business capabilities of Teams Calling Essentials. Officials said both products will be phased out after the new plan is released.
The Teams Phone with Calling plan (available for business users and subscriptions to Microsoft 365 and Office 365, including Microsoft Teams) allows users to enjoy 3,000 minutes of local talk time in the US and Canada.
Users can also make 2,300 minutes of local calls in other markets. Calls outside the user's local area require scheduling additional calls.
Teams Phone with Calling Plan costs $15 per user, per month. Teams Phone alone costs $8 per user, per month. The cost of the local plan is $12 per user, per month.