How Microsoft Teams can Address Remote Work Compliance Challenges Post COVID-19
How Microsoft Teams can Address Remote Work Compliance Challenges Post COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled many organizations to adapt to the new normal of a remote workforce. This new environment brought on additional challenges that IT, legal and compliance and remote workers quickly needed to address. For some organizations, Microsoft Teams (“Teams”) was not widely used, or perhaps not used at all. However, in a post-COVID 19 world, it quickly became a critical application to keep businesses functioning.
Microsoft recognized this challenge and is offering their "freemium" version of Teams for six months. According to Microsoft, Teams saw a 500 percent increase in meetings, calls and conference usage in China since the end of January.
IT and legal compliance stakeholders need to understand a few key considerations when rolling out Teams.
If the expectation is that Teams will only be used for a short period of time, Microsoft provides a 90-day window after a subscription ends for an organization to extract Teams’ data, if needed. Other solutions do not currently commit to a data deletion timeframe.
IT should partner with legal and privacy compliance stakeholders to ensure that enabling new technologies such as Teams will not cause downstream challenges. Policies and procedures may need to be updated to address these changes and additional end user trainings may be required to facilitate the remote workforce. With a little planning, organizations can realize the benefits of Teams and minimize disruption due to COVID-19.
Microsoft recognized this challenge and is offering their "freemium" version of Teams for six months. According to Microsoft, Teams saw a 500 percent increase in meetings, calls and conference usage in China since the end of January.
IT and legal compliance stakeholders need to understand a few key considerations when rolling out Teams.
Data Retention and Deletion
By default, Teams’ data (chats, channels, and files) is retained indefinitely. This may be against existing retention schedules and policies and may also conflict with other regulatory obligations. Organizations need to define how Teams’ data will be managed within the organization and perhaps update or create policies, procedures and processes to address a new Teams’ implementation.If the expectation is that Teams will only be used for a short period of time, Microsoft provides a 90-day window after a subscription ends for an organization to extract Teams’ data, if needed. Other solutions do not currently commit to a data deletion timeframe.
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