Microsoft Teams now offers end-to-end encryption for one-to-one calls

On December 14th, 2021, John Gruszczyk, a technical product manager at Microsoft (MS), announced, that end-to-end encryption (E2EE) is now generally available for MS Teams calls between two users. MS launched a public preview of E2EE for calls back in October, after announcing the option earlier in 2021.

IT administrators now have the option to enable and manage the feature for their organization once the update is implemented. However, E2EE will not be enabled by default at the user even then. Once IT administrators have configured MS Teams to be used with E2EE enabled, users will still need to enable E2EE themselves in their Teams settings. E2EE encrypts audio, video and screen sharing.

Certain futures will not be available when E2EE is turned on. These include recording of a call, live caption and transcription, transferring a call to another device, adding participants, parking calls, call transfer, and merging calls. If any of these features are required for a call, E2EE must be turned off for that call.

Currently, MS Teams encrypts data, including chat content, in transit and at rest by default, and allows authorized services to decrypt content. MS also uses SharePoint encryption to secure files at rest and OneNote encryption for notes stored in MS Teams. E2EE is particularly suitable for one-on-one calls in situations requiring increased confidentiality.

MS also published an in depth explanation of how this option can me turned on.

With this step, MS is following the example of Zoom, which launched E2EE in October and is making it available for larger group sessions (up to 200 participants).