The Microsoft Inspire event, the biggest global Partner community event hosted by Microsoft, took place last month with more than 67000+ participants! For the first time in Microsoft history, all attendees around the world joined the event completely digital – and a majority of the 500+ sessions have been hosted via Microsoft Teams. 

Microsoft Teams is becoming increasingly popular not only at this major digital event, but also in everyday business life. For example, the number of Microsoft Teams users in 2020 has increased to 75 million active users per day worldwide due to the effects of COVID-19. 

Source: Microsoft via Statista (https://www.statista.com/chart/21191/daily-active-users-of-microsoft-teams/) 

Besides the need for companies to rapidly move into the cloud with Microsoft Teams to share and collaborate on data and in meetings, data security concerns and regulatory compliance are top of mind for industries like Public Sector, Healthcare and Financial Services. Worldwide legal regulations e.g. GDPR or finance industry-related compliance aspects require that access to personal and business critical data is restricted in the cloud. Also the European Court struck down the Privacy Shield regulation with the US in July 2020. These concerns have slowed the move of private data to the cloud thus inhibiting data driving innovation. 

With the eperi Cloud Data Protection for Microsoft Teams, we enable you as a customer to use the Microsoft Teams application as well as the other M365 applications (OneDrive, SharePoint, Outlook / Exchange) legally compliant in the cloud. With the patented eperi pseudonymization technology, confidential data like files, chats, emails or calendar entries is encrypted before it is sent to the cloud, which prevents unallowed access to the data by cloud providers or externals. As a result, no confidential data is available in the cloud. Of course, business-relevant functionalities like searching, sorting, upload and download are still supported on desktop clients, web browsers and mobile devices. As another advantage, the seamless integration between the mentioned M365 application is ensured. 

You as a customer can create your own secure Microsoft 365 ecosystem, where you are in sole control of your data while you are still able to use the benefits of Microsoft’s cloud solution. In parallel, your data is stored legally compliant regarding GDPR or US Cloud Act in the cloud – there is no need to worry about your data. Protected files, emails and calendars can be shared between the different M365 application as well as with external partners or community members. The eperi Gateway as a proxy solution allows a secure access to protected data inside and outside the organization. 

Our experts at eperi are happy to discuss your usecase in regards to Microsoft Teams or Microsoft 365. No matter if you already use the M365 cloud or plan to introduce it in your organization – eperi will give you the ability to control your data in the cloud and is happy to participate in your project! 

About the author:
Georg Gütschow
Technical Product Manager
eperi GmbH