Microsoft Teams is getting a big update to make your work calls more secure

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Your boss might not be happy about this

Microsoft Teams Dynamic View
(Image credit: Microsoft/LinkedIn)

Worried your boss might be snooping on your Microsoft Teams voice calls with fellow employees? Fear no more — or at least fear a bit less.

Beginning in July, Microsoft is enabling end-to-end encryption (aka E2EE) on one-to-one Teams Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls, so that only the conversation participants will be able to to listen in.

However, Teams administrators in workplaces will retain the ability to disable end-to-end encryption for specific users or entire, well, teams.

If your IT head honcho does decide to let you use end-to-end encryption, and you want to do so, then you'll be able to switch it on by going into your Teams settings and selecting Privacy from the left-hand navigation bar. 

There, you'll see a toggle switch to turn end-to-end encrypted calls on or off. Both participants in the voice call will need to have it switched on for the call to be fully encrypted end-to-end.

Turning it on will prevent your Teams administrator from recording the call or generating a transcript of the conversation. 

"E2EE calls will only support basic calling features like audio, video, screen share, [and] chat and advanced features like call escalation, transfer, record, merge etc. will not be available," reported MSPowerUser yesterday (June 3).

MSPowerUser seems to have inside information that goes beyond what was revealed in a Microsoft "road map" update, which states only that Teams end-to-end encryption will be generally available on most platforms next month.

"The feature will be available on [Teams] Desktop and Mobile clients and not on the web," says MSPowerUser.

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Paul Wagenseil
Paul Wagenseil

Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom's Guide focused on security and privacy. He has also been a dishwasher, fry cook, long-haul driver, code monkey and video editor. He's been rooting around in the information-security space for more than 15 years at FoxNews.com, SecurityNewsDaily, TechNewsDaily and Tom's Guide, has presented talks at the ShmooCon, DerbyCon and BSides Las Vegas hacker conferences, shown up in random TV news spots and even moderated a panel discussion at the CEDIA home-technology conference. You can follow his rants on Twitter at @snd_wagenseil.