- Microsoft Teams gets better protection against bots
- Humans will now have to remove any bots or agents participating in a meeting.
- Developers will be able to register and pre-authorize their agents
Microsoft is cracking down on bots infiltrating Teams meetings, introducing new technology that will allow humans to verify that everyone in a call is who they say they are.
Much like a nightclub bouncer, the new tool will require a human user to verify the identity of bots in the call lobby, before the meeting begins.
The company says it used a combination of “behavioral signals and infrastructure to identify bots with a higher degree of accuracy” so it could strengthen Microsoft Teams’ ability “to distinguish between bots and human participants when they join a meeting.”
Bots in teams
This launch comes now as bots and transcription and note-taking agents become increasingly common in meetings – ostensibly to help participants summarize and remember details, but these unwanted guests could also pose a security and privacy risk.
“Bots began joining meetings that attendees never intended to attend,” Meera Ajam, Microsoft’s product marketing manager, wrote in a company blog post. “For example, after connecting a third-party service to a meeting, some users found that its bot continues to automatically join future meetings. »
“Admitting a robot should be a deliberate decision, not something that happens by mistake,” Ajam added, noting that several clicks from a human will now be required for a robot to be allowed entry.
If that sounds like an unwanted extra hassle, fear not: Microsoft says it has added a way for users to pre-verify agents or bots, including “a registration path for independent software vendors (ISVs) who create meeting experiences for Microsoft Teams.”
“When Teams recognizes this marker, it can identify the bot as a known participant,” Ajam wrote.
This means developers will be able to register with Microsoft to ensure their tools are authorized for use in Teams, with Ajam noting that the company is working with “a limited set of ISVs to preview this feature and validate the experience before wider availability.”
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