Microsoft is rolling out a new Teams meeting protection policy that allows administrators to automatically block all identified external bots from joining Teams meetings.
This new feature builds on another Teams policy introduced in June that added smarter bot protection, ensuring all detected bots are tagged in the lobby and require organizer approval before joining.
The new policy goes one step further and will automatically prevent external bots from joining Teams meetings, without requiring explicit organizer confirmation before they’re admitted.
“With this update, organizations can strengthen meeting security by configuring Teams policies to automatically block detected external meeting bots from joining meetings,” the company said in a Microsoft 365 Message Center update on Friday. “This gives administrators additional control over how identified bots are handled and can help reduce organizational risk.”
This new admin policy is rolling out as part of a targeted release until the end of August and should reach general availability worldwide by late September.
It will be available under the “Manage bots” meeting protection settings in the Teams admin center, will be off by default, and will require admin activation and evaluation before deployment.
After being enabled, the policy can be assigned to specific users or groups through existing Teams meeting policy management, and all identified external meeting bots will be blocked from joining meetings governed by the newly assigned policy.
The change ensures that third-party bots (which can have various uses, from note-taking and transcription to other automated tasks) and malicious apps controlled by threat actors cannot join Teams meetings without attendees and organizers realizing that a non-human participant has been added.
As Microsoft warned in April, attacks abusing Teams for access and lateral movement on enterprise networks are surging, with threat actors impersonating IT or helpdesk staff to contact employees via cross-tenant chats and trick them into granting remote access to steal data.
Since December, admins can also block external Teams users via the Defender portal to thwart cybercrime gangs (including ransomware groups) attempting to abuse Teams in social engineering attacks targeting victims’ employees.
As announced in June, Microsoft is also planning to add additional admin controls, including policies to block external bots entirely, allow lists for approved bots, admin reports and audit logs on bot detection and presence, and more granular controls for different security requirements.
Overall prevention scores can hide what happens after initial access. Once attackers are using valid credentials, prevention drops sharply.
The Blue Report 2026 measures defenses technique by technique across 338 million simulations run in customer production environments.
Microsoft adds smarter bot protection to Teams meetings
Microsoft 365 outage affects Teams, SharePoint and other services
Microsoft: August updates break printing, PDF export in WPF apps
Microsoft patches max severity code execution, privilege escalation flaws
Microsoft shares temporary fix for Windows 11 gaming issues
Hackers infect Android car head units with proxy botnet malware
ToxicPanda Android malware uses VPN permissions to block Google Play
CISA orders urgent patching of actively exploited Zimbra flaw
Stay one step ahead of new threats in the new year. Join Huntress for the monthly Tradecraft Tuesday.
Discover why encryption and key management are critical for modern business.
See how AI is reshaping email attacks. Download the 2026 Kaseya Email Security Report.
Signature-based prevention fell to 50%. See what your controls still stop.
Protect yourself from data brokers, scammers, and the next data breach with digital identities.
Discover how least agency keeps your AI tools capable, controlled, and secure.
Terms of Use – Privacy Policy – Ethics Statement – Affiliate Disclosure
Read our posting guidelinese to learn what content is prohibited.
