Microsoft Teams is a popular communications app used for both video calls and messaging, and it has been included in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office since 2017. However, the video calling component of the app was rapidly adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic as a way for people traditionally based in offices to have “face-to-face” meetings when they could not be physically in the same place.
Since the pandemic's end, the remote working trend has continued, with Microsoft Teams and competitor communications apps now deeply embedded in many firms’ cultures.
While many communications channels like Microsoft Teams saw their popularity skyrocket due to COVID-19, it’s taken a while for the surveillance policies and processes at financial firms to catch up with all the new ways people have communicated since the start of the pandemic. For example, in 2022, US banks were fined $1.1 billion for failing to perform proper surveillance on WhatsApp messages. In August 2023, 13 Wall Street firms were fined a total of $549 million for surveillance failures on WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage by US regulators. Going forward, financial firms need to ensure they have the right policies and processes for archiving and supervision on channels like Microsoft Teams – or potentially risk similar fines.
Regulations surrounding Microsoft Teams archiving and supervision compliance
Current regulations that mandate communications surveillance for financial services firms clearly state that Microsoft Teams archiving and supervision is a requirement, alongside other communications channels. For example:
Since the UK left the EU, it has transposed over the EU rulebook around trade and communications surveillance – including MiFID II, MAR, and GDPR. Currently, the UK’s trade and communications surveillance rules remain very similar to the EU rules.
MS Teams archiving and supervision comes with a specific set of compliance challenges due to the nature of the media involved and elements of the regulatory requirements. These include:
In short, Microsoft Teams archiving and supervision can be one of the more challenging areas of communications surveillance and investigations for compliance teams to operate in.
Failing to capture and monitor Microsoft Teams communications data can expose organizations to significant risks, including:
The self-inflicted damage that can result from a failure to undertake Microsoft Teams archiving and supervision can be substantial. Firms need to be sure they are undertaking this aspect of their overall trade and communications surveillance program correctly.
For communication tools such as Microsoft Teams, it’s important to put in place compliance best practices that are robust enough to ensure that market abuse is being effectively detected and that the program will hold up to regulatory scrutiny.
Key best practices include:
Implementing best practices can improve both the efficiency and the accuracy of communications surveillance, including Microsoft Teams archiving and supervision.
Having robust Microsoft Teams archiving and supervision in place is essential today as employees embrace the benefits of digital collaboration. Also, regulators are backing up their insistence that newly popular communications tools are archived and monitored for market abuse with enforcement actions and fines.
However, capturing and monitoring Microsoft Teams data has its own particular challenges, so firms need to make sure they are working with a surveillance platform that has experience overcoming these. Additionally, a firm’s surveillance platform should be able to robustly support the kinds of communications surveillance best practices that reduce false positives, boost efficiency, and enhance the ability to detect and prevent market abuse. By understanding regulations, overcoming challenges, mitigating risks, adopting best practices, and leveraging innovative solutions like SteelEye, businesses can navigate the complex terrain of compliance and ensure a secure and compliant digital workplace.
SteelEye – a pioneering RegTech that created the first and only fully integrated surveillance solution – provides Microsoft Teams archiving and supervision. The comprehensive compliance and data analytics platform offers various functionalities to help businesses manage and analyze communication data, including integration with Microsoft Teams. The functionalities of SteelEye in relation to Microsoft Teams include:
Video Monitoring and Archiving: SteelEye allows you to monitor and keep videos from Microsoft Teams meetings. It provides a recording and archiving feature that captures video, audio, and chat content from meetings held on Microsoft Teams. These recordings are stored securely and can be accessed later for compliance, review, and analysis purposes. The active transcription of all the communication allows the users to run detection on video, audio, and messaging used in Teams. This feature ensures that important discussions, decisions, and information shared during meetings are preserved for future reference in keeping with regulatory requirements.
Meeting Graph Functionality: The Meeting Graph functionality within SteelEye provides insightful visualizations and profiling of the interactions between users within Microsoft Teams:
Visual Representation: The Meeting Graph is typically displayed in the bottom right corner of the platform's interface. It visually represents interactions with other users by using lines of varying thickness to indicate the frequency or intensity of interactions between different people. Thicker lines suggest more frequent or substantial interactions.
Interaction Profiling: The Meeting Graph creates a profile of your communication patterns within Microsoft Teams. By analyzing the thickness of lines connecting one user to another. Compliance managers can quickly identify the individuals the monitored person interacts with most frequently.
Meeting Profile Write-up: Additionally, SteelEye's Meeting Profile feature provides a textual summary of the meetings users have participated in during a specific time period. This write-up offers insights into the nature of these meetings, the topics discussed, and the participants involved. This summary can be invaluable for reviewing your meeting history, understanding your engagement, and identifying trends in your interactions.
Overall, the Meeting Graph and Meeting Profile functionalities within SteelEye enhance users' ability to visualize and analyze their communication dynamics within Microsoft Teams. These features not only help users to understand their collaboration patterns but also offer a valuable tool for compliance, performance evaluation, and informed decision-making.
Additional features of how SteelEye helps with Microsoft Teams Compliance:
Contact our compliance experts to see our platform in action or learn more about how we can help your firm reduce compliance fatigue.