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MC392295: Disable chat write access for anonymous or unauthenticated users

Updated December 8, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Updated October 12, 2022: We have updated the rollout timeline below. Thank you for your patience.

Financial institutions consider chat messages as a form of data exfiltration, so it’s imperative for IT admins to gain flexibility and control over chat access for anonymous or unauthenticated users. The latter may be expected to join Teams meetings, but they should be restricted from seeing and accessing any type of electronic communication on chat. This feature provides additional security by only disabling chat write access for non-federated users and unauthenticated users who join Teams meetings through a link, so it must be used in conjunction with disabled meeting chat policy applied to financial advisors to remain compliant. This message is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 91142.

IT admins can now disable chat write access at the policy level for non-federated users and unauthenticated users who join Teams meetings through a link that must be used in conjunction with disabled meeting chat policy to provide additional security against data exfiltration.

MC392295: Disable chat write access for anonymous or unauthenticated users

When this will happen

  • Standard: early June through mid-July 2022
  • GCC: late July through mid-August 2022
  • GCC High: late August through late November 2022 (previously early September 2022)
  • DoD: mid-September through late January 2023 (previously early December 2022)

How this affects your organization

With this change IT admins can now disable chat write access at the policy level for non-federated users and unauthenticated users who join Teams meetings through a link.

What you can do to prepare

There are two ways IT admins can disable chat write access for non-federated users and unauthenticated users who join Teams meetings through a link:

  • PowerShell: Admins can run the syntax -MeetingChatEnabledType <String> with current supported values Enabled, Disabled, or EnabledExceptAnonymous.
  • Teams Admin Portal: Admins can select the option, “Turn it on for everyone but anonymous users” in the “Chat in meetings” dropdown and apply this meeting policy to a subset or all tenant users.

Note: the scope of EnabledExceptAnonymous or “Turn it on for everyone but anonymous users” is limited to disabled write access. Once this meeting chat policy is applied to user/s, an organizer cannot override this policy through meeting options.

Message ID: MC392295
Published: 15 June 2022
Updated: 08 December 2022
Release Phase: General Availability
Platform: Mac, US Instances, Web, Windows Desktop, World tenant

Alex Lim is a certified IT Technical Support Architect with over 15 years of experience in designing, implementing, and troubleshooting complex IT systems and networks. He has worked for leading IT companies, such as Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco, providing technical support and solutions to clients across various industries and sectors. Alex has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the National University of Singapore and a master’s degree in information security from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also the author of several best-selling books on IT technical support, such as The IT Technical Support Handbook and Troubleshooting IT Systems and Networks. Alex lives in Bandar, Johore, Malaysia with his wife and two chilrdren. You can reach him at [email protected] or follow him on Website | Twitter | Facebook

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