Microsoft Teams Calls End to End Encryption now in Public Preview

Way back in March Microsoft announced that they will soon support End to End Encryption in Microsoft Teams and today Microsoft announced that the feature is now available in Public Preview.

End-to-end encryption is the encryption of information at its origin and decryption at its intended destination without the ability for intermediate nodes to decrypt. Microsoft Teams will support an option to use end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for ad hoc 1:1 Teams VoIP calls, allowing users to pass sensitive information such as passwords more securely.

To support customer security and compliance requirements, IT will have full control of who can use E2EE in the organization. A new policy will be added and it will have a parameter to enable E2EE for 1-1 calls. By default it is disabled, allowing admins to have full control of the roll-out of this feature in their organization. E2EE can be enabled for the whole organization or just a subset of users.

If enabled, end user will see E2EE option in their settings, by default it will be OFF until switched ON by end user. E2EE calls will only support basic calling features like audio, video, screen share, chat and advanced features like call escalation, transfer, record, merge etc. will not be available.