Security features in Microsoft 365

Bethany Reid
Wednesday 24 February 2021

Being aware of the security features in Microsoft 365 means that we can handle data more confidently, knowing that it’s in the right hands. It also means you’re always in control during online events and meetings. We demo these features below in our ‘Security features in Microsoft 365’ session. If you didn’t make it along to our session on Monday, we’ll be running it several times throughout the year.

Update your meeting options accordingly

There have been a few updates to meeting options in Teams over the past six months. These settings make Teams meetings more suitable for larger events as you can restrict what your guests can do, such as:

  • not being able to unmute
  • disabling the meeting chat
  • not allowing participants to share their screen
  • making your participants wait in a virtual lobby until you admit them

If you’re unsure what level of participation is required, it’s better to restrict everyone to the minimum in meeting options and then grant additional permissions as needed once the meeting has started. Soon, you’ll be able to disable individual cameras, as well as all participants’ camera.

If you forget to set your meeting options and your link falls into the wrong hands, your event could be interrupted by accidental or malicious intruders. This is also why we encourage pre-registration for larger events with calendar invites, rather than posting a meeting link blindly online.

Guides and earlier blog posts which you may find useful:

Update video permissions in Stream, not Teams

If you get a meeting recording link in Teams and try to share it with colleagues or students, you’ll be asked whether you want this to be available to everyone in the organisation. For ease, you may feel inclined to click ‘Yes’ so you can share the link – not realising that you’re adding it to a org-wide video feed in Stream.

If you want to share your meeting recording with a few other people, open the video in Stream and change the permissions manually.

We’ll see changes to how Microsoft handle meeting recordings this year which we’ll look at more closely during the Summer months.

This topic has been covered in-depth previously during sessions and blog posts. Find these below, along with online guides:

Manage permissions for files in Teams and OneDrive

Quick test:

  1. Log into your OneDrive for Business
  2. Select ‘Shared’ from the left hand menu
  3. Select the ‘Shared by you’ tab

How many of these files do you still need others to access?

While it’s important that we learn to share files securely and in accordance with the Information Classification policy, we also need to know how to revoke access where it’s no longer needed.

Find out more about this features in the Microsoft guide: stop sharing OneDrive or SharePoint files or folders.

Request files securely

If you’re in a role where you need to gather files from colleagues often, collating items for an agenda or weekly updates to manage a project, what do you do currently? We guess that most people would:

  • add files to a Team site
  • add files to a shared OneDrive folder
  • send a OneDrive link via email
  • send a local file via email
  • all or some of the above

What if those files were confidential or irrelevant to others in the Team? Rather than stick to email, which means the files you need to collate are scattered online, use the ‘Request files’ feature in OneDrive for Business.

‘Request files’ generates a link to send to your participants. Once they follow the link, they’re taken to a friendly upload portal which allows them to upload files directly to your OneDrive folder. Your recipients will never see each other’s files and they’ll all be stored in the same place. It’s also a handy feature if you’re dealing with externals who aren’t well-versed in Microsoft 365 or confident with file sharing.

Read more about this feature in the Microsoft guide: create a file request.

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