Microsoft is rolling out a new Teams meeting protection policy that allows administrators to automatically block all identified external bots from joining Teams meetings.
This new feature builds on another Teams policy introduced in June that added smarter bot protection, ensuring all detected bots are tagged in the lobby and require organizer approval before joining.
The new policy goes one step further and will automatically prevent external bots from joining Teams meetings, without requiring explicit organizer confirmation before they're admitted.
"With this update, organizations can strengthen meeting security by configuring Teams policies to automatically block detected external meeting bots from joining meetings," the company said in a Microsoft 365 Message Center update on Friday. "This gives administrators additional control over how identified bots are handled and can help reduce organizational risk."
This new admin policy is rolling out as part of 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, will be off by default, and will require admin activation and evaluation before deployment.