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Configure Teams meetings with three tiers of protection

  • Article
  • Applies to:
    Microsoft Teams

Information icon. Some features described in this article require Teams Premium.

The articles in this series offer various options for you, as an admin, to utilize the compliance features in Teams and Microsoft 365. These options allow ensure that your organization's meeting environment aligns with your compliance requirements. These articles explore the available options with sensitivity labels and templates, and how you can use them together with other Teams admin settings.

Note

Meeting sensitivity labels and custom meeting templates require a Teams Premium license.

This article defines four different configurations, starting with a baseline configuration for meetings that don't have specific compliance requirements. Each extra configuration represents up a meaningful step in protection as meeting options become more restricted. The configurations in this article provide examples of how to configure protection for meetings with different levels of sensitivity. Use these examples to understand what's possible and modify the specific settings as needed for your organization.

There are three configurations:

  • Baseline protection

  • Sensitive protection

  • Highly sensitive protection

This series also provides a variation of the highly sensitive configuration that is designed for presentations that have minimal interaction from attendees.

Three tiers at a glance

The following table summarizes the configurations for each tier. Use these configurations as starting point recommendations and adjust the configurations to meet the needs of your organization. Depending on your compliance needs, you might not need every tier.

  Baseline Sensitive Highly sensitive Highly sensitive presentation
Allow camera for attendees On On On Off
Allow mic for attendees On On On Off
Apply a watermark to everyone's video feed Off Off On On
Apply a watermark to shared content Off Off On On
End-to-end encryption Off Off On On
Manage what attendees see Off On On On
Meeting chat On On In-meeting only Off
People dialing in can bypass the lobby Off Off Off Off
Prevent copying chat content to clipboard Off Off On On
Record meetings automatically Off Off Off Off
Who can bypass the lobby? People in my org, trusted orgs, and guests People who were invited Only organizers and co-organizers Only organizers and co-organizers
Who can present People in my org and guests People in my org and guests Only organizers and co-organizers Only organizers and co-organizers
Who can record Organizers, co-organizers, and presenters Organizers and co-organizers Disabled due to watermarking Disabled due to watermarking

Details on how to configure each tier are covered in:

Managing compliance with sensitivity labels and meeting templates

Both meeting templates and sensitivity labels have the ability to enforce certain meeting options. Most options can be enforced as either on or off or can be left unconfigured so the meeting organizer can set them.

Important

Some features are controlled by admin policies and must be enabled there before they can be controlled by meeting templates and sensitivity labels.

Some options are only available in sensitivity labels and some are only available in templates. The following are available in both:

  • Chat
  • End-to-end encryption
  • Lobby options
  • Meeting recording
  • Prevent copying chat content to clipboard
  • Watermarking

Sensitivity labels and templates can be used together to help you meet your compliance needs. For more information, see Use Teams meeting templates, sensitivity labels, and admin policies together.

Meeting chat

Meeting chat can be an important part of collaboration during a meeting. However, you might want to restrict meeting chat in certain types of meetings to avoid sensitive information being shared there.

As an admin, you can control meeting chat in the following ways:

  • Teams admin meeting policy (per user or group) can be used to allow chat, allow chat for everyone except anonymous participants, or turn off chat. Can also be used to prevent copying chat content to the clipboard.
  • Sensitivity label meeting option (per meeting) can enforce chat to be on or off or allowed only during the meeting. Can also be used to prevent copying chat content to the clipboard. These options can be left unconfigured for a meeting organizer or template to control.
  • Meeting template meeting option (per meeting) can enforce chat to be on or off or allowed only during the meeting. Can also be used to prevent copying chat content to the clipboard. These options can be left unconfigured for a meeting organizer or template to control.

For the three tiers of protection, we allow chat for baseline and sensitive meetings and restrict it in highly sensitive meetings to in-meeting only. We also prevent copying chat content to the clipboard in sensitive and highly sensitive meetings.

For more information, see Manage chat for sensitive Teams meetings.

Meeting recordings and transcripts

As an admin, you can control meeting recordings and transcripts in the following ways:

  • The Meeting recording admin meeting policy (per user or group)
  • The Transcription admin meeting policy (per user or group)
  • The Recordings automatically expire (recording deletion) admin meeting policy (per user or group)
  • The Who can record option in sensitivity labels and meeting templates (per meeting)
  • The Record automatically option in sensitivity labels and meeting templates (per meeting)

If your organization or certain people or groups within it should never be able to record meetings, you can turn off the feature by using the Meeting recording admin meeting policy.

If your organization or certain people or groups within it should never be able to transcribe meetings, you can turn off the feature by using the Transcription admin meeting policy.

If there are certain types of meetings that must always be recorded, you can enforce the Record automatically option using either a meeting template or a sensitivity label.

Within the three tiers discussed here, recording is disabled in highly sensitive meetings because we're using end-to-end encryption and watermarks on shared content and video. If you need to be able to record highly sensitive meetings, make sure you don't enforce watermarks or end-to-end encryption with the sensitivity label. Meeting organizers can still use end-to-end encryption and apply watermarks if a given meeting isn't being recorded.

For more information about managing meeting recording options, see Manage Microsoft Teams meeting recording options for sensitive meetings.

For information about policy-based recording of meetings for compliance, see Introduction to Teams policy-based recording for callings & meetings.

Meeting with guests and external participants

There are three kinds of external participants who can join meetings:

  • Participants from trusted organizations
  • Guests
  • Anonymous participants

Participants from trusted organizations join meetings via the external access feature. You can control what domains, if any, your organization wants to trust. (This setting also affects 1:1 and group chat with people in those domains.)

If Teams guest access is enabled for your organization, then guests can join meetings. Guest access settings can also be used to control guests' screen sharing mode, including disabling screen sharing. (Guest access is also used for inviting guests to teams.)

If the Anonymous users can join a meeting Teams admin setting is turned on, anonymous participants can able to join meetings.

While you can turn anonymous join off completely without affecting features other than meetings, both guest access and trusted organizations are used in scenarios other than meetings. If you want to restrict meeting access for these participants but need to leave the features turned on for other reasons, you must use the lobby to prevent these participants from joining a meeting.

Lobby options

The meeting lobby allows meeting organizers to vet attendees before allowing them into the meeting. Depending on the meeting type and compliance requirements, you can allow all attendees to bypass the lobby or hold certain attendees in the lobby until the organizer admits them. If you wish to prevent certain types of people - such as guests - from attending meetings, you can have them go through the lobby and then the meeting organizer can deny them admittance.

For the baseline tier, we allow everyone except anonymous attendees to bypass the lobby. For sensitive meetings, we allow only people with a meeting invitation to bypass the lobby. For highly sensitive meetings, we require organizers to admit each attendee.

As an admin, you can control the lobby in the following ways:

  • The Who can bypass the lobby? admin meeting policy (per user or group)
  • The Who can admit from lobby admin meeting policy (per organizer or group)
  • The People dialing in can bypass the lobby admin meeting policy (per user or group)
  • The Who can bypass the lobby? option in sensitivity labels and meeting templates (per meeting)
  • The People dialing in can bypass the lobby admin meeting policy (per user or group) or in sensitivity labels and meeting templates (per meeting)

These options are also available to the meeting organizer unless a sensitivity label or template locks them.

If you're in a highly regulated industry and need to manually admit attendees to all meetings, you can configure the lobby using admin meeting policies in the Teams admin center. If your organization has different types of meetings that have different lobby requirements, then we recommend using meeting templates or sensitivity labels to configure these options.

While the admin policy sets a default, you need a template or label to enforce a lobby option.

You can choose to keep the default for Who can admit from lobby as Organizers and presenters or change it to Organizers and co-organizers. This per-organizer policy sets a default that your organizers can change through their Meeting options. You must manage this setting through the Teams admin center. Meeting templates and sensitivity labels don't support this policy.

For more information, see Configure the Microsoft Teams meeting lobby for sensitive meetings.