Information barriers in Microsoft 365
In this tutorial, we will learn about Information barriers in Microsoft 365.
Microsoft’s cloud services offer advanced communication and collaboration tools. However, imagine you want to limit contact and collaboration between two groups in order to avoid a conflict of interest in your company. Alternatively, you may wish to limit communication and collaboration between particular personnel inside your company in order to protect sensitive information.
Information barriers are also supported by Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business. If your subscription includes information barriers, a compliance administrator, also known as an information barriers administrator, can set policies in Microsoft Teams to enable or disallow communication between groups of users. For cases like these, information barrier regulations can be used:
- Firstly, a user in the day trader group should not communicate or share files with the marketing team
- Secondly, finance personnel working on confidential company information should not communicate or share files with certain groups within their organization
- Thirdly, an internal team with trade secret material should not call or chat online with people in certain groups within their organization
- Then, a research team should only call or chat online with a product development team
- Lastly, a site for day trader group should not share or access by anyone outside the day trader group
Information barrier policies can block or enable communications and cooperation in Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive in any of these cases (and more). Persons may be prevented from phoning or talking with people they should not. Alternatively, Microsoft Teams, allowing users to communicate solely with certain groups.
What happens with information barriers
People who shouldn’t converse or exchange files with other specified users won’t be able to discover, choose, chat with, or call them if information barrier regulations are in place. Checks are in place with information barriers to prevent unlawful communication and collaboration. In addition, information barrier policies in Microsoft Teams assess and prevent the following types of unlawful communications:
- Firstly, searching for a user
- Secondly, adding a member to a team
- Thirdly, start a chat session with someone
- Fourthly, starting a group chat
- Then, inviting someone to join a meeting
- Sharing a screen
- After that, placing a call
- Sharing a file with another user
- Lastly, access to file through sharing the link
They will not be able to proceed if the persons involved adopt an information barrier policy to prevent the activity. Furthermore, anybody who is subject to an information barrier policy may be prevented from speaking with others in Microsoft Teams. When persons who are affected by information barrier regulations are in the same team or group, they may talk about it. They may then be kicked out of those chat sessions, and no future communication with the group may be permitted.
Reference: Microsoft Documentation