“Our team has been experiencing issues with unauthorized participants joining our Microsoft Teams meetings. Sometimes people join late and disrupt presentations, while other times we’re concerned about sensitive discussions. How can we control access to our Teams meetings, lock them once they’ve started, and ensure only authorized participants can join? We need a solution that works for both scheduled and ad-hoc meetings.”
Understanding Teams meeting security challenges
Organizations face increasing security concerns when conducting virtual meetings. Similar to how you can manage Teams channel privacy and security, controlling meeting access helps prevent unauthorized participants from joining sensitive discussions. Meeting hosts need to understand how to properly troubleshoot Teams meeting connection issues while maintaining strict security protocols.Unauthorized access to Teams meetings can lead to information leaks, meeting disruptions, and compliance issues. Microsoft Teams offers several features to restrict meeting access, control participant permissions, and lock meetings once they’ve begun. These security measures help protect sensitive discussions while maintaining productive collaboration. Implementing proper meeting controls is essential for organizations handling confidential information.
Enhancing privacy with Teams meeting locks
Today we will show you how to configure and use Teams meeting locks to control who can join your meetings. We’ll cover both pre-meeting settings to restrict access and in-meeting controls to lock meetings once they’ve started. You’ll learn how to automatically join meetings, manage lobby settings, and secure ongoing discussions. These instructions assume you have Microsoft Teams installed and the necessary permissions to schedule and manage meetings.
Securing and locking Teams meetings
Configure meeting options before starting
- Adjust lobby settings by scheduling a meeting in Teams, clicking “Meeting options,” and choosing who bypasses the lobby – select “Only me and co-organizers” for maximum security or “People in my organization” for internal meetings.
- Restrict who can present by selecting “Only organizers” in the presenter options dropdown to prevent participants from sharing content or taking control of the meeting unexpectedly.
- Enable the waiting room feature to review and admit participants individually, giving you complete control over who joins your meeting regardless of their organization status or invitation.
- Disable attendee microphones and cameras by default by toggling these options in meeting settings, reducing the risk of disruptions when participants first join the meeting.
- Prevent forwarding of meeting invitations by selecting this option in meeting settings, ensuring only directly invited participants receive the meeting details and join links.
Lock meetings after they’ve started
- Lock the meeting manually once all expected participants have joined by clicking the participants panel, selecting the “…” menu at the top, and choosing “Lock meeting” to prevent anyone else from joining.
- Use the meeting lobby effectively by monitoring the lobby notifications and only admitting verified participants, even if they appear to have legitimate names or email addresses.
- Assign meeting co-organizers before important meetings by right-clicking their name in the participants list and selecting “Make a co-organizer” so they can help manage security during large meetings.
- Enable automatic meeting join for trusted team members by adjusting organization-wide Teams admin settings, allowing seamless entry while maintaining restrictions for external participants.
- Secure the meeting chat by clicking the chat options menu and adjusting who can send messages, preventing unauthorized communication channels during sensitive discussions.
Detect and protect sensitive content
- Enable sensitivity labels for your Teams meetings through the Microsoft 365 compliance center, allowing you to classify meetings based on content sensitivity and automatically apply appropriate security controls.
- Activate Microsoft Purview Information Protection features to automatically detect sensitive content shared during meetings and alert participants about potential data exposure risks.
- Configure Data Loss Prevention policies that work with Teams to prevent unauthorized sharing of sensitive information during meetings through chat, file sharing, or screen sharing.
Securing Teams meeting issues
- If legitimate participants cannot join a locked meeting, temporarily unlock the meeting by clicking the participants panel, selecting the “…” menu, and choosing “Unlock meeting” to allow entry before re-locking.
- When participants receive the message “This meeting is locked” but need to join, ask them to contact the organizer via chat or email so you can make a deliberate decision about unlocking or keeping the meeting secure.
- If meeting locks are not available or the option appears grayed out, verify you’re using the latest version of Teams by checking for updates, as this feature might require recent client versions.
- When organization-wide policies prevent certain locking features, contact your Teams administrator to request exceptions for specific meeting types or adjust tenant-level security settings for your department.
- If participants are automatically joining despite meeting locks, check your organization’s Teams admin settings as certain roles may have bypass privileges that override meeting lock controls.