14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has announced at Ignite today that Microsoft Teams would be updated with end-to-end encryption, with a preview to go live in the coming months.
However, the end-to-end encryption would go live in stages for Microsoft Teams users, with commercial customers to get it first as part of one on one unscheduled Teams calls.
Needless to say, the long-term goal is to further expand this feature to more scenarios, so eventually, it will also be available for scheduled calls and online meetings.
But of course, there’s no ETA as to when this is supposed to happen, as Microsoft is taking things one at a time to make sure everything is working correctly.
“To further address our customers’ security and compliance requirements, Teams will support end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for one-to-one Microsoft Teams calls, providing an additional option for conducting sensitive online conversations. IT will have full discretion over who can use E2EE in the organization. E2EE for Microsoft Teams one-to-one ad hoc VoIP calls will be available to commercial customers in preview in the first half of this calendar,” the company announced today.
The Microsoft Teams growth
The adoption of Microsoft Teams is growing at a record pace, all thanks to a global shift in the working trends across the world. The pandemic forced many companies to embrace remote working, so employees needed a way to remain productive without actually going to the office.
Microsoft Teams was one of the platforms offering such capabilities, and with Microsoft investing aggressively in this product, the adoption improved so fast that it eventually reached record levels that not even the company expected.
For example, the most recent statistics shared by Microsoft itself indicated that in late 2020, Microsoft Teams had 115 million daily active users, all following a massive increase recorded in the first 10 months of the last year.