Security Compliance Guide for Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams, the new unified communication and collaboration app, increased in popularity and adoption day by day, giving tough time to its competitors. Therefore, it will be interesting to understand if security and compliance features in Microsoft Teams are up to that par or not.

Microsoft built Teams on the Microsoft 365 and Office 365 hyper-scale, enterprise-grade cloud. Therefore, it delivers the highest standards of advanced security and compliance capabilities by default.

• By default, all servers in Microsoft Teams are designed to use certificates. Additionally, all the data in Microsoft Teams is protected on the network using OAUTH, TLS, Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (SRTP).
• Microsoft Teams uses the PKI feature of the Windows Server operating system for safeguarding the data used for encryption of Transport Layer Security (TLS) connections. Also, the keys used for encryption get exchanged over TLS Connections
• For server communications within Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams utilizes mutual TLS (MTLS) and TLS from clients. It helps in preventing eavesdropping. The TURN Protocol plays its role in protecting real-time media.
• As the traffic coming to Microsoft 365 use TLS/HTTPS encrypted channels, all the traffic is encrypted right from the start.
• Microsoft Teams provides encrypted communications and carries out endpoint authentication on the Internet using TLS and MTLS protocols.
• The RTP traffic is protected by encrypting media traffic using Secure RTP (SRTP) and a profile of Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP). It helps in offering confidentiality, authentication, and replay attack protection.
• For encryption of key exchanges, Microsoft Teams use FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) compliant algorithms.

Microsoft Teams Offers the Best-in-Class Security

As a user of Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams, you own and control your data. Therefore, managing security and compliance is an invisible partnership with Microsoft. Microsoft plays its part by vigorously protecting Microsoft 365 services, and you do have to devise a data governance strategy for protecting your data, identities, and devices. As a licensed Microsoft Teams user, you do have the option to achieve appropriate levels of protection and compliance by using Microsoft 365 and Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) together.

• With Microsoft Teams, you get single sign-on through Active Directory, data encryption at transit and rest, along with team and organization-wide two-factor authentication.
• The SharePoint encryption applies to all the files stored in SharePoint.
• Microsoft Teams stores notes in OneNote that are secured by OneNote encryption.
• Users can configure ATP (Advanced Threat Protection) to identify malicious content in SharePoint, OneDrive, and other integrated applications for efficient content management.
• The Microsoft Teams administrator can create and implement policies for safeguarding attachments and handling malicious attachments. Advanced Threat Protection Plan 1 and 2 have these capabilities in inbuild and apply to SharePoint, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft 365.
• Organizations can determine how secure the organization’s Microsoft Teams posture is by accessing Microsoft Secure Score available under Microsoft 365 Security Center.

Compliance Policies in Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams has strict policies and an abundance of information available to help you with compliance. You will find Microsoft Teams helping you comply with communication in channels, chats, and attachments. Its strong retention policies, Data Loss Protection (DLP), eDiscovery, and legal hold for channels, chats, files, audit log search, and mobile application management with Microsoft Intune are at par.

• The Microsoft 365 Compliance Center is a central hub that provides easy access to the data and tools required to manage compliance needs by an organization.
• By visiting the Microsoft 365 Compliance Center, you can access the Compliance Manager solution that simplifies your journey to managing compliance.
• It also displays the Compliance Score of your organization and allows you to take actions for reducing risks around data protection and regulatory standards. The risk-based score showcases your current compliance posture and recommends actions intended to minimize the risks associated with data protection and regulatory standards.
• Using Solution Catalog, you can access advanced and new solutions available for your organization for improving compliance.
• To meet a specific set of compliance measures as per your region or requirement, your organization has the responsibility to assess the risks based on your compliance obligations and determine the way you process the data in that service
• ISO 27001, ISO 27018, SSAE18 SOC 1 and SOC 2, HIPAA, and EU Model Clauses (EUMC) are the primary compliance standards used by Microsoft Teams.

EPC Group Offers Microsoft Teams Security and Compliance Consulting

The security and compliance strategy adopted by Microsoft is deeper than just securing information in Microsoft Teams. Everyone wants a secure Microsoft Teams environment, and EPC Group is helping global organizations with Microsoft Teams consulting to implement a secure and compliant Microsoft Teams experience.

EPC Group is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and has been providing Microsoft consultation services for more than 24 years.

We have a team of Certified Microsoft Teams consultants. They are proficient, experienced, and supportive. They will monitor, classify, and detect threats necessary for data safety and breach prevention.

Our Microsoft Teams experts are well aware of the integrated security and compliance measures in Microsoft 365. They dealt with all six categories hence will help you integrate privacy features necessary for your organization.

They will help you safeguard privacy, provide you access to meetings and video conferencing controls, implement identity and account protection, safeguard data against cybersecurity threats and deploy 90+ regulations necessary for holistic compliance.

Our Microsoft Teams experts will train your admins to understand controls and foster a safe, secure, and compliant Microsoft Teams experience.

EPC Group will help you with native integration with Insider Risk Management to securely coordinate, advanced eDiscovery support for live documents and links shared in Teams, and retention policies for Microsoft Teams meeting recording.