Microsoft Teams: Organize important resources in chats and channels

🚨 The Signal: Teams now allows pinning and organizing links, files, and messages in chats and channels. This centralizes information, potentially increasing the risk of sensitive data exposure if not properly managed.

The Impact

All Teams users are affected, increasing the risk of sensitive information exposure and unmanaged data sprawl.

• End Users: Increased risk of inadvertently sharing sensitive data via pinned content.
• Security Teams: New challenge in monitoring and preventing data leakage through easily accessible pinned resources.
• Admins: Need to review and update data governance policies for Teams to cover pinned content.
• Compliance Teams: Potential for non-compliance with data handling policies if sensitive information is pinned without proper controls.

The Action

1. Review existing Microsoft Teams data loss prevention (DLP) policies in Microsoft Purview to ensure they cover pinned content.
2. Communicate best practices to end-users regarding the types of information suitable for pinning in Teams chats and channels.
3. Consider implementing sensitivity labels for Teams chats and channels to restrict what can be pinned based on data classification.
4. Audit existing Teams channels and chats for sensitive information that may become more exposed through pinning.
5. Update internal data handling and acceptable use policies to specifically address the pinning feature in Microsoft Teams.

Domain: Teams · Impact: medium · Workload: Teams