It seems many Microsoft Teams users might be trusting the service a little too much, new research has claimed..
Cybersecurity company Hornetsecurity is urging companies to take more preventative action against potential threats using the Microsoft Teams video conferencing platform.
According to its study, almost half (45%) of the users admit to sending “confidential and sensitive” information frequently via Microsoft Teams.
Protect your Teams data
What’s worse, an even higher figure (51%) were found to be sharing “business-critical” information, while a similar number (48%) of the respondents had accidentally sent a Microsoft Teams message that should not have been sent, such as to the wrong person.
When it comes to devices, offenders are more likely to be sharing confidential information using a personal device (51%), compared with a work-issued piece of equipment (29%). Clearly, the importance of using professionally secured devices needs to be emphasized in staff training.
Hornetsecurity proposes this as one solution to alleviate the pressures on company cybersecurity, citing 56% of its survey participants who believe that employee training and awareness is the most important aspect to reducing risks.
The company’s CEO, Daniel Hofmann, explains that “companies must have adequate safeguards in place to protect and secure business data” as more workers turn to chat-like messaging services.
If users are to continue sharing content through chat, Hofmann says that companies must “ensure information and files shared across the platform are backed up in a secure, responsible way.”
This news comes just a couple of weeks after researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison made the case that Teams (and Slack) third-party apps may have some worrying security flaws. Because their code is rarely analyzed by Teams’ and Slack’s dev teams, the potential for data leaks could be greater than expected.
