{"id":12604,"date":"2023-11-16T11:22:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-16T19:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/?p=12604"},"modified":"2023-11-16T11:26:40","modified_gmt":"2023-11-16T19:26:40","slug":"sensitivity-labeling-a-new-layer-of-security-for-microsoft-teams-premium-meetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/insidetrack\/blog\/sensitivity-labeling-a-new-layer-of-security-for-microsoft-teams-premium-meetings\/","title":{"rendered":"Sensitivity labeling: A new layer of security for Microsoft Teams Premium meetings"},"content":{"rendered":"
Microsoft Teams is where collaboration and connection happen. The wide array of digital artifacts that come from our employees\u2019 day-to-day meetings\u2014things like recordings, transcripts, and shared documents\u2014need the same level of enterprise protection as the rest of our organization\u2019s proprietary material.<\/p>\n
Self-service sensitivity labels<\/a> give Microsoft Digital (MSD), the organization that supports, protects, and empowers our company, the power to enforce policies proactively and keep shared workspaces safe. With the recent launch of Microsoft Teams Premium, we\u2019re extending that power to meetings.<\/p>\n We have a lot of data that gets generated within the Microsoft environment. There are different levels of security in terms of how much you can share across the organization or even externally with partners and guests, and we need a rationale for how that data can be shared.<\/p>\n \u2014Sanjay Ramaswamy, principal program manager, Microsoft Teams product protections<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n [<\/em>Discover transforming Microsoft with Microsoft Teams: Collaborating seamlessly, teaming up fearlessly.<\/em><\/a> Explore advancing your meetings with the Microsoft Teams Meeting Guide.<\/em><\/a> Unpack crafting a new hybrid meeting room experience at Microsoft with Microsoft Teams.<\/em><\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n Empowering self-service sensitivity labels helps every employee create the resources they need without engaging IT. To support this level of freedom, we rely on a strong governance strategy that identifies and protects valuable content. As a result, our employees can create the containers and content they need to stay productive while keeping our organization\u2019s data safe.<\/p>\n Without labeling, you\u2019re forced into a one-size-fits-all model for your tenant. With that arrangement, your default is going to be either very restrictive or too open, either of which is a problem.<\/p>\n \u2014David Johnson, tenant governance and compliance architect, MSD<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cWe have a lot of data that gets generated within the Microsoft environment,\u201d says Sanjay Ramaswamy, principal program manager for Microsoft Teams product protections. \u201cThere are different levels of security in terms of how much you can share across the organization or even externally with partners and guests, and we need a rationale for how that data can be shared.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A proper labeling schema enables actionable policies around the access level and shareability of enterprise data. And now that we\u2019re increasingly infusing AI into our work, clear labeling and policies<\/a> are even more important for ensuring digital assistants stay compliant.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout labeling, you\u2019re forced into a one-size-fits-all model for your tenant,\u201d says David Johnson, tenant governance and compliance architect for MSD. \u201cWith that arrangement, your default is going to be either very restrictive or too open, either of which is a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Microsoft Digital Security and Resilience (DSR) and MSD developed our internal system of sensitivity labels for classifying objects and containers. The labels provide clearly delineated governance, and they\u2019re simple for users to understand:<\/p>\n Microsoft Teams meetings add a whole new dimension to the labeling conversation.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of things happen in meetings today: Documents, recordings, and transcripts get shared, and there\u2019s a meeting chat that continues to go on after the call is over,\u201d Ramaswamy says. \u201cSo you can imagine that there’s a pretty vast surface area where data can be leaked out of control.\u201d<\/p>\n When labels extend to meetings, different considerations come into play beyond just access and shareability. There are implications for the meeting experience itself. Who should wait in the lobby? What do the different classifications mean for calendar invites? Who can copy and paste text from the chat?<\/p>\n The user is front and center in this whole journey. We want to give people and organizations choice, but we also want to make it intuitive for them to navigate so we don\u2019t introduce a new burden.<\/p>\n \u2014Sanjay Ramaswamy, principal program manager, Microsoft Teams product protections<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Microsoft Teams Premium<\/a> brings sensitivity labels and policies together with configurable meeting features. Depending on how an organization configures its labels, Teams Premium applies a templatized set of designated meeting options designed to enhance security and compliance.<\/p>\n Those options include:<\/p>\n \u201cThe user is front and center in this whole journey,\u201d Ramaswamy says. \u201cWe want to give people and organizations choice, but we also want to make it intuitive for them to navigate so we don\u2019t introduce a new burden.\u201d<\/p>\n The product itself guides the users. You can select from a dropdown of parent and child labels, hover over a label to get more information about what they mean, click on \u2018learn more\u2019 to access support documentation, and go into the meeting options pane for a full view of a label\u2019s effects.<\/p>\n \u2014Chanda Jensen, senior product manager, MSD<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s helpful that these decisions happen within employees\u2019 existing workflows. Applying self-service sensitivity labels takes place wherever users create their meetings, whether that\u2019s the Microsoft Teams Premium or Outlook clients or the web apps for either tool.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also important that the labels are informative, without loading the users with too much information\u2014or most people would simply opt out. The label selection process helps inform users about the implications of their labels through a streamlined UX flow.<\/p>\n \u201cThe product itself guides the users,\u201d says Chanda Jensen, senior product manager with MSD. \u201cYou can select from a dropdown of parent and child labels, hover over a label to get more information about what they mean, click on \u2018learn more\u2019 to access support documentation, and go into the meeting options pane for a full view of a label\u2019s effects.\u201d<\/p>\n We also realize that most organizations have entire teams of security and technical professionals who manage their data protection policies. To accommodate institutional oversight, Microsoft Teams Premium allows default settings for an organization\u2019s entire tenant or individual lines of business. They can also lock those defaults so individual employees don\u2019t violate confidentiality policies.<\/p>\n That\u2019s especially useful when different groups have different meeting privacy requirements. For example, customer-success professionals or salespeople who frequently deal with external meeting attendees might default to a more open label. Meanwhile, finance, legal, or R&D employees would probably establish a highly confidential baseline.<\/p>\n The central value is that organizations can configure the tool as they see fit.<\/p>\n We\u2019re still experimenting with where features within certain labels fit for our tenant. We’re starting out with what feels comfortable at first, and then we’ll slowly evolve to a V2 of our sensitivity label rollout.<\/p>\n \u2014Chanda Jensen, senior product manager, MSD<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cYou get to decide your label hierarchy, but the core principle is that you want commonality and consistency,\u201d Johnson says. \u201cYou don’t want meeting labels to have a completely different term set.\u201d<\/p>\n Internally implementing Microsoft Teams Premium and self-serve sensitivity labels for meetings has provided us with plenty of lessons for driving adoption. Our internal communications team has been taking advantage of Microsoft Viva Engage, community comms blasts, and various employee forums across the organization. Our internal technical documentation site also contains plenty of material to support employees as they adopt the new workflow.<\/p>\n To lay the groundwork, we\u2019ve been training our employees on our overall labeling hierarchy as part of our business fundamentals. Together, these adoption efforts mean our Microsoft Teams Premium implementation contains a mix of training, engagement, accountability, and testing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re still experimenting with where features within certain labels fit for our tenant,\u201d Jensen says. \u201cWe’re starting out with what feels comfortable at first, and then we’ll slowly evolve to a V2 of our sensitivity label rollout.\u201d<\/p>\n Between the growing awareness of sensitivity labels, well-established adoption practices, and a slow-and-steady approach to experimentation and implementation, our internal adoption of Microsoft Teams Premium is providing a firm foundation for our customers. Every lesson we learn gets incorporated into our public-facing guidance.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of being customer zero is giving effective product feedback on what works and what doesn\u2019t on a product that\u2019s brand new for teams,\u201d Johnson says. \u201cIs this useful? Is it going to break things? Is it suitable for the right teams?\u201d<\/p>\n By answering those questions internally, we ensure sensitivity labels in Microsoft Teams Premium can help secure our customers\u2019 day-to-day meetings and enable greater collaboration.<\/p>\n Try Microsoft Teams Premium and see how its extra protection for your meetings and organizational data works for you<\/a>.<\/p>\nSelf-service labels, proactive protection<\/h2>\n
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Self-service labels in Microsoft Teams Premium<\/h2>\n
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Customer Zero for Microsoft Teams Premium<\/h2>\n
\nHere are some tips for getting started with labeling in Microsoft Teams Premium:<\/p>\n\n
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