Three Reasons IT Leaders Use a Third-Party Microsoft Teams Governance Solution

In preparation for our upcoming webinar with Osterman Research, Addressing Microsoft Teams Compliance Risks, we will explore some of the leading drivers for adopting third-party governance solutions for Microsoft Teams. Surveying 143 IT leaders at medium- and large-scale enterprises, the study investigated current trends in archiving Microsoft Teams data. This blog will cover just three reasons respondents chose a third-party solution. To see them all, download the full report and sign up for the webinar!

To capture all data types within Microsoft Teams

Native Microsoft Teams archiving alone does not capture all data on the platform. Notably, it currently cannot capture source files and documents, audio in meetings and calls, message reactions, code snippets, and edits to messages. Over half of respondents (53.5%) listed the ability to ingest all data types as very or extremely important in their decision to use third-party software.

The inability to capture all Microsoft Teams interactions poses compliance and legal risks to organizations, as non-compliant acts and messages can be hidden from archival view. In fact, 27% of respondents had employees attempt to use Microsoft Teams to circumvent compliance requirements—and that is only those who got caught. Third-party solutions' complete capture enhances both defensibility and capabilities of supervision, compliance, and eDiscovery.

To be able to jointly manage all data sources from a single platform for compliance and eDiscovery

An equally influential driver for adopting third-party solutions, with 53.5% of respondents citing as very or extremely important, is having a single platform for records management, eDiscovery, and compliance for both Microsoft and non-Microsoft data sources. Relying on native capabilities requires compliance, legal, and IT officials to juggle multiple repositories and systems to implement policies or retrieve data. Managing disparate, data source-specific archives complicates workflows and increases the chance of incongruent policies and accidental non-compliance.

Having a platform that hosts all enterprise data allows users to apply consistent, universal policies. For example, if legal had to place a hold on an employee and they were relying on multiple native archiving platforms, they would have to manually apply that hold on each and every repository. In contrast, a third-party solution would allow those same holds to be placed with a single action. For this reason, third-party solutions dramatically ease workflows for compliance, privacy, eDiscovery, or any other use case that requires access to multiple data sources.

To improve supervision capabilities for Microsoft Teams communications

Going beyond retention and remediation, some regulations require organizations to actively monitor employee communications. For example, FINRA mandates that financial institutions review incoming, outbound, and internal communications related to “member’s investment banking or securities business.” While Microsoft Teams has some native supervision capabilities, 43% of respondents listed “gaining access to better tools for meeting supervision requirements” as very or extremely important.

In addition to allowing reviewers to assess potentially non-compliant messages across a variety of data sources from a single platform, third-party compliance management software offer superior supervision functionalities that simplify review processes. For example, third-party offerings tend to have more complex and granular rules for flagging violations, which dramatically reduces the amount of time reviewers spend assessing false positives. Third-party solutions are also better suited to meet complicated regulations as they can accommodate advanced supervision requirements, such as multi-level review and random sampling. These added supervision capabilities enhance compliance defensibility while also reducing the time and effort required to fully comply with industry regulations.

To learn more about why IT leaders are drawn to third-party solutions and to hear about other Microsoft Teams governance and compliance trends, tune into ZL Tech’s webinar with Osterman Research on June 24th.

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A graduate from Kalamazoo College, Martin Hansknecht serves as a marketing associate for ZL Tech. He gets his Midwestern charm from growing up in the mitten of Michigan, his East Coast work ethic from his time spent in NY and D.C., and his European fashion from years living in England, Germany, and Hungary. Now he is looking forward to absorbing that innovative West Coast mindset!