Microsoft Teams is a useful platform used across the world in many different businesses, including schools. They offer an easy-to-use platform for teacher to share their lessons on, and they give the students an easy way to organize and hand in assignments; almost everyone seems to be using it. But is Microsoft Teams safe for students?
Microsoft Teams is quite a safe platform for students to use; they have good security protocols that they follow to ensure the safety of the users’ data and personal information. Ensure the Students understand how to use the platform correctly, so no user errors occur that lower their safety.
What does Microsoft do to protect its users? Is there any way for the teacher or the schools to make this platform safer for their students to comfortable use? In this article, we go through these questions and more.
How Safe Is Microsoft Teams?
Microsoft Teams is part of the Office 365 products that Microsoft provides; these products are divided into four compliance categories: A, B, C, and D. Microsoft Teams is placed in the C category. This means that the security compliance commitments are enabled and activated by default.
Microsoft Teams is compliant with multiple regulatory security standards, so they use various security features to meet these security requirements. Some of these security measures include team-wide two-factor authentication as well as single sign-on, which is a setting that admins can enable in the Active Directory.
This factor means that account security is not tied to the device’s security or the passwords used; this is an important aspect for students as they use Microsoft Teams on their own personal devices. So, this aspect gives the students just a little bit more security with their online learning.
The Active Directory does also allows Microsoft Teams to encrypt all the data that is in transit as well as at rest which helps to protect it from any unauthorized viewings. And files that are stored on OneNote and SharePoint, which are other Office 365 products that may be utilized by teachers, are also secured with these encryption protocols that are delivered by these two apps, respectively.
Every piece of information that you send via Microsoft Teams, whether it is an instant message or file, will be stored and backed up in a program called Azure. Azure is a security Directory that provides a safe and secure place to store information; this is where Microsoft teams also keep all of its user’s information.
Azure is delivered in 54 global regions through data centers; this allows Microsoft Teams to store all the data that is associated with the program based on each student’s region. This means that the data stored per each user is in compliance with the data security regulations provided by each region.
This means that Microsoft Teams is complying with the mandatory security regulations that have been put in place by your very own government to keep your information safe when in the hands of big corporations, such as Microsoft.
All these encryption protocols in both the transfer of data and data storage in Microsoft Teams make the program quite safe for students to use for studying purposes without worrying that their personal information will be leaked to someone with ill intent.
Some Concerns For Students Using Microsoft Teams
Even though the program is quite safe to use, just like any program out there in the world, there are always a few concerns that you need to be aware of for students who want to use Microsoft Teams to help them with their studies.
One of these concerns is that no matter how easy the setup and use of Microsoft Teams is for some people, there are a few people out there who can find it confusing to navigate through the software. This is can either be because of the user’s age or language that might make the software difficult to understand at first.
If the student does not know how to correctly operate the Microsoft Teams software, then this could lead to a few security issues due to user error. Because some of the security options can be switched on and off, a student who does not understand the program well may turn some of the security features off by accident without knowing it.
Unfortunately, this could lead to the student’s information being more exposed than it should be; this can make it easier for people to acquire their information and use it.
Microsoft Teams does not work outside of a full Microsoft setup, which means that a student who does not own a Microsoft compatible device may not be able to access the lessons. Or they may resort to finding a “hacked” version, which can lead to a multitude of security problems for the student.
The security systems of Microsoft Teams are a bit on the complicated side; this does mean that it can be vulnerable to attackers or hackers, which means because the security system is complicated, it could take a while for the breach in security to be dealt with or for the breach to even be identified.
This security breach could leave a good amount of time for the attackers to get personal information about the Microsoft Team users.
This is, unfortunately, a very real problem that affects all of these kinds of platforms that we now use on a daily basis, and it is and will be an ongoing battle for all the companies that provide these kinds of services. These companies are placing many protocols in place to try and avoid these situations and to try and protect your data as much as they can.
These kinds of attacks are quite rare, so the likelihood of your information getting stolen is small, but this is a problem that all Microsoft Teams users need to be aware of.
How To Keep Students Safe On Microsoft Teams
Teachers that are using Microsoft Teams to teach their various lessons can ensure the safety of their data and information as well as their students’ data and personal information.
The teacher must ensure that every student understands how to use the Microsoft Teams software correctly; if their students are young, then the teacher needs to educate the students’ parents on how the Microsoft Teams platform works.
Doing thing will help avoid any user error problems around the safety settings in Microsoft Teams; knowing that the students are comfortable and as safe as possible when using this chosen platform will relieve some stress from the teacher.
Teaching the students or student parents about this platform is not only the teacher’s responsibility but also the school or collages that the teacher works for.
If the teacher or school wants to use Microsoft Teams for their lessons, they need to ensure that all of their students have access to a device that is compatible with the software, so a student does not feel like they need to get a “hacked” version of the software.
If all of the students do not have access to a compatible device, then the school should maybe reconsider its use of Microsoft Teams, and they should find a different platform to work off of.
To help ensure the safety of the learners, the school can help the students create their Microsoft Teams account but allocate the students a student number specific to them which they can use in place of their real names. This will help keep the student’s identities safe from any system attacks on Microsoft Teams.
The teacher can also keep count of the number of people that should be in the class to ensure that there is no one in the class that should not be there. They can also keep an eye out for any unusual behavior on the Team that they can then report to the Microsoft Teams security systems.
This will help keep anyone that is trying to “hack” into the lesson at bay and will provide the student with the reassurance that they are safe as their teacher is looking out for them. This will create a more productive lesson as the students can just focus on what they are being taught.
Conclusion
Microsoft Teams is safe for students, just as safe as any other platform of this nature would be; there are always some security risks involved when doing anything over the internet. There are some security risks that you can help the students to avoid, and there are some that can just happen; all you can do is try to ensure that you do your best to keep your students information safe.
References
https://faq.oit.gatech.edu/content/what-microsoft-teams-and-why-would-i-use-it
https://www.varonis.com/blog/microsoft-teams/
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/security-compliance-overview