Teams Meetings Get New Bot Blocking Feature

Microsoft has introduced a new Teams meeting protection policy that allows administrators to block all identified external bots from joining meetings. This new feature builds on an existing policy that added smarter bot detection, which tags detected bots in the lobby and requires organizer approval before they can join.

The new policy takes this a step further by automatically preventing external bots from joining Teams meetings without requiring explicit organizer confirmation. This means that organizations can strengthen meeting security by configuring Teams policies to block detected external meeting bots from joining meetings, giving administrators more control over how identified bots are handled and reducing organizational risk.

The new admin policy is currently in 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 and will require admin activation and evaluation before deployment.

Once enabled, the policy can be assigned to specific users or groups through existing Teams meeting policy management, blocking all identified external meeting bots from joining meetings governed by the newly assigned policy. This change ensures that third-party bots and malicious apps controlled by threat actors cannot join Teams meetings without attendees and organizers realizing a non-human participant has been added.