Teams updates to watch: malicious link warnings, blocked risky files, and a new private backroom chat

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Microsoft has announced three Teams updates the past months. Two that strengthen security and one that will improve how organizers coordinate events: Malicious URL Protection, Weaponizable file type protection and Private chat for organizers, co‑organizers, and presenters. Please note that timelines can shift, so treat the dates as guidance rather than guarantees. Malicious URL Protection (Roadmap ID 499893 ) Microsoft has announced link‑scanning in Teams chats and channels that warns senders and recipients about unsafe URLs. The feature reached general availability rollout by the end of November 2025, while the separate change to make it ON by default, originally planned as part of that release, has been postponed to early 2026.  If you don't want to wait for it to be on by default, or feel the need to configure it, you can do so in the Teams admins center: "Teams admin center → Messaging settings → Scan messages for unsafe URLs”. Or you can mange the configuration with Power...

In case you missed it: Loop components in Teams chat

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 As always, there are a lot of features coming out or being enhanced in the Teams client. Loop components is one of the new cool features released this spring. This is a feature allowing for better collaboration within a chat object.

Unless it has been disabled by an admin, it should be available to all by default, and really easy to set up. When writing a one on one chat or a group chat, just select the loop component you want to incorporate from the menu. At the time of this post, it's not possible to add components to channels, but this should be in the works.

A clever eye will notice that Loop components in a chat is stored as a file in the chat, and you don't need the Teams client to access the file. As long as you have the link (and access rights) you can access it through any web browser.

You can read all bout the feature in this post, and check out which Loop component controls an admins can change.