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...

Users of classic Teams will be moved to New Teams soon.

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Microsoft Teams has announced that it will automatically upgrade classic Teams users to new Teams after March 31, 2024. Though the upgrade will not apply to Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) users, be aware that classic Teams on VDI support will end on June 30th 2024 as well as for the regular desktop. 

If you are a classic Teams user, you will at first see banner messages encouraging you to move to the new client. If you postpone the upgrade, you will have to do the upgrade on June 30th 2024 

If you are an admin and want to control the process, take a look at the following article on how to use policies in Teams Admin center.