Microsoft will soon roll out a new system that will help businesses identify inappropriate messages sent by employees over its productivity and collaboration software.

As noted in a new entry in the company’s product roadmap, the Microsoft 365 compliance center will receive an upgrade that will cut the time it takes to identify breaches of company communication policies drastically.

“This feature will reduce the detection to investigation time to under an hour, allowing your organization to respond to communication compliance alerts promptly,” Microsoft explained.

The Microsoft 365 update is currently still under development, but is scheduled to roll out in preview in April, ahead of a full launch in the autumn.

Employee monitoring with Microsoft 365

Unbeknownst to some, many businesses constantly monitor the way in which employees interact with one another over email and communication software.

Part of the justification for this practice, considered by some to be an unacceptable invasion of privacy, is that cybercriminal actors frequently target employees over these kinds of platforms, which can also be used by malicious insiders to exfiltrate data.

Another factor is the opportunity for business software to be used to bully or harass fellow employees, in breach of an organization’s official communications policy.

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As explained in a Microsoft 365 blog post, the communication compliance facility tracks messages sent and received over email, Microsoft Teams, Yammer and third-party platforms. Once a message in breach of pre-defined policies has been identified, it is handed over to a designated team of reviewers.

After the Microsoft 365 update takes effect later this year, the time between initial detection and review will supposedly fall from roughly 24 hours to under an hour. As part of the change, Microsoft Teams users will also be encouraged to report “inappropriate or concerning messages” within chats and channels manually, a separate roadmap entry shows.

Although businesses will certainly benefit from the upgrade, it is unclear precisely how Microsoft will manage to cut the investigation time by such a significant margin. TechRadar Pro is awaiting a response to a request for clarification.

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