Sensitivity Labels in Microsoft Teams Meetings

The Teams Queen Blog: Microsoft Teams Enhances Security with Sensitivity Labels for Meetings

The Teams Queen Blog penned by Sara Fennah covers an exciting new feature launched by Microsoft Teams Premium- Sensitivity Labels for meetings. This groundbreaking improvement allows users to limit access to meeting invites and responses, both on Outlook and Teams.

The aim is to provide control over the content viewership and secure meetings on Teams. With Sensitivity Labels, users get an advanced, value-added security layer, ensuring data privacy while reaching out to their team members.

Appropriately used in tandem with meeting templates, these labels are available on Teams meeting edit screen. If the assigned label incorporates item encryption, the meeting invitation becomes encrypted, functioning like email encryption. This means invite viewers with capable mail clients or those using the Outlook web version or the encryption portal can access these encrypted invites. For more information on how this works, click here.

Practical Limitations

Despite these advances, users need to be aware of some limitations. The sensitivity labels cannot be applied to instant meetings, webinars, or live events. The auto-labelling feature is not supported, and mobile clients may face issues while decrypting meeting invites in calendar applications. Changes made to the label during a meeting do not apply unless the meeting restarts.

Creating A Meeting Sensitivity Label

Users can create sensitivity labels from the Microsoft Purview Compliance Portal under the Information Protection section. This program empowers users to limit control of the meeting invite, details, and join link, ensuring meeting information doesn't go beyond the invited members.

In Protection settings, encryption can control meeting invite access, content marking can place header and footer into the invite, and Protect team meetings and chats can configure protection settings.

Assigning Sensitivity Labels to Meetings

Automatic-labelling is off-limits for meeting labels, so users have to leave this option off. If the label creation process is successful, it needs to be published to make it available to users for usage. There are no differences in label-publishing for meetings as opposed to other objects. Publishing a label falls under the Label policies in the Information Protection page within the Compliance Portal.

Conclusion: Sensitivity Labels – A Major Upgrade

Sensitivity labels are an essential security upgrade for Microsoft Teams. They provide higher control over meeting access, ensuring data safety and privacy. However, these labels come with limitations and it is advisable to keep in mind that these limitations will likely evolve to better fit user needs as the product matures.

Read the full article Understanding Sensitivity Labels for Microsoft Teams Meetings

Learn about Understanding Sensitivity Labels for Microsoft Teams Meetings

The advent of Sensitivity Labels on Teams Premium allows you to restrict access for meetings, bring about extensive encryption for any message, and effectively enforce meeting choices. Primarily, such labels can be put in sync with meeting templates to provide maximum efficacy. For those with advanced users can manually set these Sensitivity Labels as required.

Representing these Sensitivity Labels on Teams is a simple task, though, at this point in time, it is not found in the documentation's outlined position but under the … menu on the meeting edit screen.

Item encryption for a label means the meeting invite will encrypt. The working principle for this encryption is the same as email encryption. Typically, mail client recipients who can decrypt the message—say, for instance, Outlook users—will be able to visualize the message. On the other hand, those employing other clients may need to rely on the web version of Outlook or the encryption portal to open the invite.

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You may encounter some noteworthy practical constraints. Key among them are; Sensitivity labels being inapplicable to instant meetings, Webinars, and Live Events. Automatic labelling is not yet supported. Mobile clients won't be able to decrypt the meeting invite in calendar applications, including Outlook mobile.

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Creating these Sensitivity labels is an intuitive process in the Microsoft Compliance center (compliance.microsoft.com) under Information Protection. Generally, creating sensitivity labels is usually outlined in the documentation on Microsoft Learn. If you want to make a label for a meeting, all you have to do is select Create a Label.

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All you need to do is enter an appropriate Name and Display name. These names provide provision for reusing the display name when an updated label having different settings (a new version of a label) is necessary, but it should appear the same to the users. An example could be a Name = SensitiveMeetingV1 and for the Display name = Sensitive Meeting.

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Protection settings encryption is vital to regulate access to the meeting invite. Content marking is crucial as it assists in inserting the header/footer into the meeting invite and Protect Teams meetings and chats is required to configure the meeting options and shelter for meeting chat.

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Autolabelling doesn't find its application for meeting labels and should thus remain off. Since groups were not chosen in the scope at the onset, the group options are greyed out.

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Sensitivity labels are not just about creating them but also about making them available to users by publishing them. If your organization has been using sensitivity labels and you intend to add this label to an extant policy, it will be covered later.

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Significantly, Sensitivity labels can limit the availability of a meeting chat. The chat can also be set to be disabled for the meeting, available only during the meeting or always, meaning from the time the meeting is created.

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For adding your new label to an existent policy, choose Label policies in the Information Protection page within the Microsoft Compliance center, and select the label policy to be edited and select Edit policy.

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The application of Sensitivity labels for Channel Meetings will require the creation and saving of a label that applies to a meeting before deciding on that label as a default for channel meetings.

In conclusion, the understanding and application of sensitivity labels to Microsoft Teams meetings are instrumental for strict access restriction, encryption, and enforcement of meeting options. These steps highlighted above can effectively guide you in the process.

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