A survey for Hornetsecurity has found an ‘urgent need’ for greater attention to backup plans for Microsoft Teams, with nearly half of users (45 percent) sending confidential and critical information frequently via the platform. The research was conducted by techconsult, an established German IT research and analyst firm.
Teams User Chat (direct messaging) is the preferred form of business communication over Teams Channel Conversations for 90 percent of respondents, and more than 41 percent of people send a minimum of 10 User Chat messages a day. Just over a quarter of all messages (26 percent) are written in Teams Group Channel Conversations, showing communication is unevenly spread across the platform.
Nearly half (45 percent) of respondents frequently share confidential and sensitive information via Teams with 51 percent often sending business-critical documents and data. Users tend to send such information more when they use personal devices; 51 percent of those on a personal device send restricted and confidential data, compared to 29 percent of people on a work device.
As Microsoft Teams now rivals email as an organizational communications method, so the importance of backing up and protecting Teams data has increased.
Hornetsecurity’s CEO Daniel Hofmann explains:
"The increasing use of chat services has changed the way many now conduct work. With this change, the risk of data loss has unfortunately increased. Companies must have adequate safeguards in place to protect and secure business data. Otherwise, they run the risk of productivity, financial and data loss. This is because Microsoft does not provide robust protection of data shared via Teams - so beyond the cyber security vulnerabilities, organizations must ensure information and files shared across the platform are backed up in a secure, responsible way."
