New Delhi: Microsoft has enhanced its protection and security in terms of applications, and now they have increased its security for its Teams platform by automatically alerting users about the malicious links in chat messages. This latest feature, part of the Microsoft Defenders for Office 365, is designed to protect users from phishing, spam, and malware attacks by flagging potentially harmful URLs shared in both internal and external conversations. This latest update will begin rollout in public review for the enterprise customers in early September 2025, with the worldwide general availability expected to be complete by mid-November 2025.
This feature will be available for Microsoft Teams on desktop, web, Android, and iOS platforms. To combat the growing threat of phishing attacks within the collaboration tools, Microsoft Teams will display a warning banner on any messages containing a URL that its threat intelligence systems identify as malicious. The system scans links against Microsoft Defender’s threat intelligence and machine learning based detection engines to determine if they pose a risk. When the user receives the message with the flagged URL, a clear warning will appear directly within the chat, alerting them that the link may be unsafe.
This warning system also informs the sender that the link they shared has been flagged as potentially harmful, allowing them to edit or delete the messages, and a key aspect of this feature is its ability to redesign the URLs even when the users have already delivered that message. Suppose a link is identified as malicious up to 48 hours post-delivery. In that case, the system will retroactively apply a warning banner to this message, a process known as Zero-hour auto purge. This update is a significant step in securing the communications of over 320 million monthly active Teams users from sophisticated phishing campaigns.
