If you work in an environment where some information must not be shared with other departments or group of users – such as financial institution where people working on a deal, communication about this deal should not be shared with other departments to avoid potential conflict of interest, Teams now allows you to set a barrier between these department/group of users.
This new capability, called Information Barriers, can be set using the Security & Compliance (SCC) PowerShell.
As this capacity is currently in preview, you must first register to https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=v4j5cvGGr0GRqy180BHbR1UzUQTEgHVPtD9W5uih2OlUMEwwUzhJSktIMUw2SDJJOE5FT1lTVzVTSS4u
Once approved you then will be able to set the required settings and policy.
Then once the policy is applied, defined set of users/groups will be unable to complete communication using Teams if they are violating the policy:
|
Action |
User Experience if policy is violated |
|
Adding Members to a team |
The user will not show up in search |
|
Start a new private chat |
The chat is not created, and an error message appears |
|
invited a user to join a meeting |
The user will not join the meeting and an error message appears |
|
Screen sharing is initiated |
The screen share won’t be allowed, and an error message appears |
|
Placing a phone call (VOIP) |
The voice call is blocked |
When a new information barrier is created, the evaluation service searches across Teams to find any pre-existing communications that may violates the policy:
- Existing 1:1 chats will become read-only
- Users will be removed from group chats
- Team membership will be updated accordingly
During the preview, any customer can create such policy but once in general availability this will requires one these licenses:
- Microsoft 365 E5
- Office 365 E5
- Office 365 Advanced Compliance
- Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance