Microsoft Teams now supports end-to-end encryption for calls

What you need to know

• Microsoft Teams recently added support for end-to-end encryption for calls.
• The functionality must be enabled by IT admins within organizations.
• Calls are more secure when end-to-end encryption is enabled.

Microsoft Teams recently added support for end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for calls. The functionality secures calls and helps meet privacy requirements for certain organizations. Since October, Microsoft has tested the feature in public preview, and the option is now generally available (opens in new tab).

End-to-end encryption protects communication by encrypting content when it's sent and then decrypting it when received. This setup prevents anyone, including Microsoft, from being able to listen to anything said in a call.

IT admins need to enable the feature, as E2EE is off by default. End-to-end encryption can be configured within a tenant and then turned on or off on specific accounts.

Enabling end-to-end encryption prevents certain options from working. Microsoft notes that users can turn E2EE off to use the following features:

• Recording
• Live caption and transcription
• Call transfer (blind, safe, and consult)
• Call Park
• Call Merge
• Cal Companion and transfer to another device
• Add participant to make the one-to-one call a group call

Support for end-to-end encryption is available on the latest versions of Microsoft Teams for Windows and macOS.

Chats, messages, and files transferred through Microsoft Teams are secured by Microsoft 365 encryption (opens in new tab).