Microsoft released a Teams admin policy that restricts third-party bots from joining meetings without organizer approval. The policy detects bots, places them in the lobby, and prompts organizers to confirm their admission, even if participants can normally bypass the lobby. This feature applies across Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS platforms in multi-tenant and GCC cloud environments. Microsoft plans further enhancements such as allow lists, blocking policies, and audit logs to provide granular control over bots. This measure is designed to prevent malicious apps controlled by threat actors from joining meetings unnoticed and to improve organizational control over meeting participants.

The policy reduces the risk of unauthorized or malicious third-party bots joining Teams meetings, which could otherwise be used for automated attacks, data collection, or disruption. By requiring organizer approval for bots, the feature helps ensure that only intended automated participants are present, improving meeting security and reducing potential attack vectors related to bot abuse. However, no known exploits or active attacks leveraging this issue have been reported.

Microsoft has implemented this feature as a configurable admin policy in the Teams Admin Center. Organizations should enable the 'Manage external bots and their access to meetings' policy to require organizer approval for bots joining meetings. Additional planned controls such as allow lists and blocking policies will further enhance security when available. Since this is a new feature, administrators should review and apply it according to their organizational security requirements. Patch status is not applicable as this is a new policy feature rather than a vulnerability requiring a patch.