45% users send confidential business data via Microsoft Teams, says Report

A new study claims that almost half (45%) of the users send “confidential and sensitive” information via Microsoft Teams.

Microsoft Teams is not safe to send confidential business data. Here is what report says. (Flickr)

Microsoft Teams users have been putting too much faith in the app. A recent study has revealed that almost half of Microsoft Teams users are using the platform to share crucial business data. Hornetsecurity, a cybersecurity firm in its recent study said that nearly 45% of Microsoft Teams users communicate “secret and sensitive” data over the platform. They also said that nearly 51% users were found exchanging “business-critical” information, while nearly 48% admitted to sending a message via Microsoft Teams that they should not have.

Attackers prefer to use their own, non-work-issued device (51%), instead of a company-issued one (29%), while sharing sensitive information. Hence, Hornetsecurity suggested that this eases the burden of cybersecurity on businesses. CEO Daniel Hofmann is quoted as saying “businesses must have proper protections in place to preserve and secure corporate data” as more employees use chat-like messaging applications.

According to Hofmann, Microsoft Teams should have “guarantee information and files exchanged throughout the platform are backed up in a safe, responsible way” if they want users to keep exchanging data in chat rooms.

Just a few weeks back, researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison had stated that the third-party apps for Teams (and Slack) may contain security issues as neither Teams nor Slack's development teams examine their code properly, and hence, it could lead to data stealing.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has released Windows 11 Build to Dev Insiders with new features that support third-party widgets and new video calling functions for Chat from Microsoft Teams. The new video calling feature will show the preview of users' video feed so that you can't fix your appearance or spot any background issues before starting a call. Widgets can be created for packaged Win32 apps.