Create Meetings in Teams Securely with an Integrated Meeting Platform

With its features that allow bringing together ideas and individuals, Teams has been regarded as a staple for organizations in the Microsoft ecosystem. As more businesses are relying on the functionalities of such an application, how secure is Teams for your teams?

Organizing structured meetings in Teams may be vulnerable to some security hiccups, such as unwanted meeting access and information breakout with unorganized access controls. What you need is an all-in-one platform within Teams that can help better secure your meetings, ensuring that the right information always gets to the right users.

Convene in Teams (CiT) is a meeting management platform in Teams that seamlessly integrates with Office 365 solutions, such as Outlook, Active Directory, Exchange, and SharePoint, to allow efficient organization and secure collaboration in meetings. Designed with the same enterprise-grade security as Convene, CiT supplements the security measures of Microsoft and Convene board portal.

Read on to know how CiT fortifies Teams security by addressing the gaps when publishing meetings.

Inviting Participants to the Teams Meeting

Adding participants to a certain Teams meeting is simple. You will just need to create a new team or channel to invite all the relevant participants in your organization. This would also mean coordinating with everyone for their availability. From there, you can attach and send the finalized meeting files and agenda for easy access and discussion of the participants. In addition, you will need to create the Teams video conference link and paste it on the same channel.

The conventional way of organizing structured meetings and inviting participants is simple but can pose security risks. All information shared in the Teams channel is shared with everyone that has been added. This risks unauthorized parties to access documents and join meetings. Implementing enterprise-wide security controls can also be difficult as it needs to configure restrictions for all users.

CiT supports easy yet secure processes when publishing meetings. Using CiT, you can instantly add participants and guests to a meeting without having to worry about their availability. With its Scheduling Assistant connected to the MS Exchange and Active Directory, you can add the participants to the meeting even without asking them individually about their schedules.

CiT also provides an easy agenda-building process by allowing users to drag-and-drop files with the agenda items. Note that you can instantly retrieve your files straight from your local drive or SharePoint repository.

Once all the documents are ready, you can create the meeting with just a single click — on the Publish Meeting button. With this, emails will automatically be sent to the invited participants that will direct them to the CiT Board App where they can review the meeting pack. Fret not because only the invited individuals can access and review the documents. Plus, no need to circulate a meeting link, as participants are prompted to join the video conference when they join the meeting link. Again, simple but secure Teams meeting preparation!

Securing Guest Access to Meetings and Documents

Microsoft allows collaboration with guests by adding them to the Teams channel and configuring their guest access in Teams chat, SharePoint files, MS 365 Group settings, and Azure External settings. This can be tedious as you have to go through all these settings per user. Moreover, there could be security risks present in the devices and files of the external attendees that could compromise your Teams.

With CiT, you can easily invite and add guest participants to the meeting, and only to that meeting — no access to your Teams channel. No need to set up restrictions across other MS platforms to ensure maximum security — CiT allows you to do that in just one app. When the actual meeting has started, they can then gain access to the meeting pack, review the files, and discuss during the meeting. After the meeting, your guests will no longer have access to the meeting files.

CiT ensures another layer of security that can prevent outside individuals from accessing your meeting files before and after the meeting. With its integration with Active Directory, there is no need to manage user permissions manually, which may lead to human errors — CiT reflects the status and access controls of each user, even guests.

Additionally, CiT’s cloud infrastructure is fortified with a 24/7 Intrusion Prevention System, which actively identifies and prevents suspicious activities, including the uploading of files containing malware. With these advanced security features, your teams in Teams can rest assured that they are shielded from any external security threats.

Restricting Participants to Access Documents

Using MS Teams alone, it is impossible to set restrictions on what each user can do to your meeting documents. You would need to open SharePoint Online, the resource management library in Microsoft, to manage the document access of the participants.

Once in SharePoint, you cannot immediately configure the access controls if you don’t have a SharePoint admin role. In that case, you would need to contact your SharePoint administrator to manage the access and sharing settings at the organizational level.

Bypassing the SharePoint access configuration can bring threats to your meetings and documents. Once again, whatever you share in your channel can be accessed by everyone, and you can’t control what they do with the information at hand.

Through CiT, you can manage permission settings of the participants to the agenda and files easily. You can set varying levels of access on the meeting pack, especially if there are items or files that only certain people should access. No need to contact the SharePoint administrator every time you have to restrict access to specific files. You can simply configure who can only access and share certain agenda items and documents.

Such advanced permission settings of CiT are not just applicable to guests, but also within the organization. You can calibrate which users from other departments or teams in your organization can access the files. All these can be done with just a toggle of a button.

Publish Teams Meetings with Confidence, only with CiT

Each step in the meeting workflow in Teams is made secure with Convene in Teams. Meeting organizers and administrators won’t have to get worked up much on security when publishing meetings as CiT adopts all the robust security features Convene board portal prides itself in.

With its advanced and intuitive access controls, only authorized users can access and share the meetings and files in CiT. What’s more, information in documents is protected with custom watermarks designed to prevent unwanted screenshots. CiT also employs a comprehensive audit trail to transparently track and monitor activities in meetings and documents. Such enterprise-grade security features and penetration testing ensure 99.9% uptime and zero vulnerabilities.

CiT guarantees leveraged security in Teams at all layers — from the meeting level to agenda, documents, and users. Get to know the benefits of CiT and experience high-grade security yourself.