MS Teams is a Compliance Gap – But Not For Long

In early October, we hosted a roundtable discussion with leading financial compliance professionals on the subject of capturing data from Microsoft Teams and analyzing that data for regulatory risk and workplace misconduct.

The invite-only session was hosted by Nabeel Ebrahim, Chief Revenue Officer at Behavox, Michael Talbert, Head of Project Management at Behavox, and a senior compliance consultant who had overseen the implementation of Teams monitoring for a number of large financial institutions in North America.

Microsoft Teams still represents a significant compliance gap for many firms and the volume of communication data being generated on the platform means it should be a top priority for compliance teams.

“Over the past year, across our global customer base, we’ve seen an 80% increase in the volume of communication data being generated by employees,” said Nabeel. “In the same timeframe, there’s been a staggering 719% rise in the volume of communications stemming from Teams.”

When it comes to integrating Teams into a compliance program, most firms are in two camps.

Nabeel explained, “One is firms that have already started using Microsoft Teams, and compliance is having to play catch up because of the limitations of their monitoring solutions.”

“On the other side, the business wants to use Teams but it’s being blocked because compliance is waiting until it’s actually implemented into its monitoring program and gone through all the compliance and security controls.”

The Development of the Behavox + Microsoft Teams Integration

During the roundtable, Michael provided some context on how the Microsoft Teams integration was developed and how Behavox is now able to provide a rapid implementation for firms looking to ingest and monitor communication data from Teams.

“It was really like a tsunami of requests at a single point in time,” said Michael. “I’ve not seen this type of uptake or interest in a communication platform throughout the many implementation projects I’ve managed over the last couple of years. Thankfully, the product and integration capability is scalable and robust, taking advantage of APIs that are developed by Microsoft so we could meet that high demand.

One of the roundtable participants queried how the Behavox platform is able to ingest data from specific employees, for example, the capital markets teams, rather than monitoring all employees.

“It’s managed through Active Directory groups,” said Michael. “So, because you’ve got Microsoft Teams, by virtue of that you typically have Active Directory implemented as well. We just need to be told which Active Directory group includes the monitored employees that you would like us to ingest data for and that requires very little configuration on our side

Another attendee asked how Behavox can ensure the platform generates a manageable amount of alerts for their compliance team to review.

“We can analyze Teams data type for a specific period, run this in a sandbox, non-production part of the platform, and review the number of alerts that are generated to ensure that it’s generating a manageable amount of alerts while also identifying relevant content for review.”

With experience of rolling out Behavox to help some of the largest banks in North America monitor their Teams communication data, the senior compliance consultant offered some assuring words for firms who are yet to implement such a solution.

“The good news is, the Microsoft Teams integration has already been developed and implemented by Behavox for the bank I am currently consulting for, and for a couple of other banks in North America, so this is going to be a plug-and-play solution for your team.”

To learn more about how Behavox is helping the world’s leading financial institutions to close their Microsoft Teams compliance gap, request a demo.