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Microsoft Information Governance: New Ways to Govern Your Data in Microsoft Teams
Published Nov 02 2021 08:00 AM 7,158 Views
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The hybrid workplace means being flexible about where and how employees work. This new dynamic may cause organizations to wonder if their information protection and governance strategy is ready for this new way of working. Additionally, pro-active governance helps to reduce the amount of low-value data in your organization, which reduces the attack surface and the amount of content that needs protection.

 

Microsoft Teams is a leading platform for collaboration and productivity in the hybrid workplace. More than ever, it is essential to manage the lifecycle of your content in Microsoft Teams easily.

 

Today we are announcing four new ways to govern content in Microsoft Teams. These new capabilities allow organizations to:

  • Create and deploy retention and deletion policies for Teams private channel messages.
  • Target retention and deletion policies to specific Teams or Teams users, such as all messages in a geography.
  • Preserve the exact version of files shared in Teams messages, so they can be retrieved along with the conversation in eDiscovery.
  • Apply a retention label automatically to a document based on its sensitivity label.

Retention for Microsoft Teams private channels is now generally available

Private channels in Microsoft Teams allow users to limit collaboration to those who need to know the information. They can also ease communication between a group of people assigned to a specific project without creating an extra team to manage. Often, these channels contain highly valuable data that an organization needs to manage carefully.

 

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Figure 1 – Create a retention policy for Teams private channels

 

We are excited to announce retention and deletion policies for Microsoft Teams private channels are generally available. This feature allows admins to create a separate retention policy to manage the private channel’s messages. They can keep or delete them according to the organization’s policies. Learn more about retention for private Teams channels in our documentation.

Dynamically target retention to specific teams

Organizations often want to target different retention and deletion policies to a group of teams or users in Microsoft Teams. For example, they may have a three-year retention period for messages in Microsoft Teams or users located in Germany. They may have another five-year policy for messages in the United States. Previously, it was challenging to maintain the membership of these groups of teams as users create new teams or delete old ones.

 

Adaptive policy scopes are available in public preview, which allows for this configuration. Adaptive policy scopes allow you to dynamically apply a policy based on user, group, or site attributes. These policies stay current as the organization creates and deletes teams, or as users change departments or locations. Adaptive Policy Scopes also work with SharePoint, OneDrive, Yammer, and more. Learn more about adaptive scopes in our documentation.

Preserve the version of a file shared in a Teams message

Users often attach files to a Teams chat or conversation which Microsoft 365 stores in OneDrive or SharePoint, referred to as a cloud attachment. It can be crucial for eDiscovery or investigations to identify the specific version of the file shared at the time of communication. This feature ensures the retention and retrievability of the file version shared with the message.

 

Today we are introducing the ability to retain the specific version of the file attachment sent with the Teams message, now in public preview. This feature allows organizations to automatically label the specific version of the file and protect it against deletion or edits. Users can continue to collaborate on the original file. This feature also works with cloud attachments in Microsoft Outlook. Learn more about retention for cloud attachments in our documentation.

Automatically apply retention based on a sensitivity label

Organizations use Microsoft Information Protection sensitivity labels to identify and protect high-value content. This includes personally identifiable information and sensitive data. Commonly, organizations have policies about how long they should keep this high-value data. For example, they might keep a document labeled as highly confidential for seven years.

 

Today we are announcing the general availability of a new way to apply retention or deletion actions to files with a sensitivity label. Organizations can now use a sensitivity label as a condition to automatically apply a retention label. Learn more about this new auto-classification option in our documentation.

 

Together, these four announcements add more great options for customizing governance policies in your organization. These features are available now for you to use.

 

Learn about these announcements and all the news from Information Protection and Data Loss Preventing in our Microsoft Ignite on-demand session.

Additional announcements

We are happy to share that there is now an easier way for you to try Microsoft compliance solutions directly in the Compliance Admin Center. By enabling the trial in the Compliance center, you can quickly start using all capabilities of Microsoft Compliance, including Microsoft Information Governance, Records Management, Insider Risk Management, Advanced Audit, Advanced eDiscovery, Communication Compliance, Microsoft Information Protection, Data Loss Prevention, and Compliance Manager.

 

This trial is currently rolling out to tenants worldwide and you can learn more about it here.

 

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