Microsoft’s aggressive marketing of Teams has paid off. With usage jumping dramatically from 32 to 44 million users over the course of one week, it’s obvious they’re riding the wave of Covid-19. Teams is a great choice for chat, video conference, and collaboration, but there are some serious implications to consider before and after implementing. Here are the top 5 things to be concerned about with Microsoft Teams:
1. ‘Dark Matter’ and GDPR/Data Security
By default, all members of a Team are able to create Private Channels, which generates a subsite entirely invisible to anyone else (including owners) in that group. It not only generates its own chat, but also its own document storage. At this point giant GDPR compliance alarm bells should be ringing in your head.
2. Proliferation: Attack of the Clones
Depending on how you implemented Teams, you may now be facing a complex architecture where sprawl and duplication abound. Why have your (potentially sensitive) data in one location when you can have it duplicated across several?
3. The SharePoint Connection
If your organisation started out with SharePoint Online for document management, you may have already found yourself dealing with users who create new Teams, attach it to an existing site, remove all members and make a mess of the underlying access structure. The connection between Teams and SharePoint is not such an obvious one, and can really make a mess.
4. Auditing
As a SharePoint support specialist, the majority of first-level support issues I am seeing are audit related, “Who deleted 2000 documents yesterday?” and “How long has that file been shared with those external consultants?” While this is easily done in your SharePoint environment, accounting for files and actions in Teams is not (yet) so sophisticated. How do you know if a user created a private channel, or whether your users have been uploading files to general chats (OneDrive), or channels (SharePoint)? Add to this the fact that Shadow IT such as Google Drive and Dropbox can easily be added to the Teams as add-ons, and you start to lose sleep at night.
5. Orphaned data
The next logical question after we’ve introduced the concepts of private channels and Shadow IT, is about business continuity. If your users create file storage only available to them and one or two others, what will happen when that business-critical information isn’t included in their hand-over? Things start to fall through the cracks.
This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the consideration and planning that should go into implementing new business tools. But don’t throw in the towel yet, because there are also some hidden tools in your subscription that can help with bringing some order to the chaos. Having a plan and some clear business rules will go a long way to cleaning up and protecting your environment, and to proving you’re doing all you can to be compliant to data security legislation like GDPR.
At IMBII, we’ve seen the whole spectrum of Teams implementations, and we can help you get organised and get your peace of mind back. Let us show you how to get there, contact us today.
Comments