Microsoft Teams Calls End to End Encryption rollout delayed

Way back in March Microsoft announced that they will soon support End to End Encryption in Microsoft Teams. The feature went into Public Preview in June and was meant to roll out in November 2021.

Now Microsoft announced that the rollout would be delayed.

End-to-end encryption is the encryption of information at its origin and decryption at its intended destination without the ability for intermediate nodes to decrypt. Microsoft Teams will support an option to use end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for ad hoc 1:1 Teams VoIP calls, allowing users to pass sensitive information such as passwords more securely.

To support customer security and compliance requirements, IT will have full control of who can use E2EE in the organization. A new policy will be added and it will have a parameter to enable E2EE for 1-1 calls. By default it is disabled, allowing admins to have full control of the roll-out of this feature in their organization.  E2EE can be enabled for the whole organization or just a subset of users.

Today Microsoft announced the new rollout schedule will begin in early December (previously early November) and expect the rollout to be completed by late December (previously late November).

E2EE calls will only support basic calling features like audio, video, screen share, chat and advanced features like call escalation, transfer, record, merge etc. will not be available.

E2EE will work only when both caller and call receiver have enabled E2EE. The feature will be available on Desktop and Mobile clients and not on the web.

Read all the details in Microsoft’s blog post here.