KnowBe4 Unifies Email and Chat Security by Extending High-Performance Threat Detection to Microsoft Teams

Messaging Security Innovations Create a Unified Defense Against Social Engineering

KnowBe4, the global leader in digital workforce security, securing both AI agents and humans, today announced the launch of KnowBe4 Messaging Security to secure Microsoft Teams. The KnowBe4 Platform now offers a unified defense across organizations' two most critical collaboration channels, chat and email. This new offering closes the exposure gap that exists between email protection and employee collaborative tools like Microsoft Teams.

According to KnowBe4'sPhishing Threat Trends Report Volume 7, Microsoft Teams is rapidly emerging as a major target for sophisticated social engineering and phishing attacks. Given the innate trust people place in messaging tools, cybercriminals are exploiting this by impersonating IT helpdesk staff to steal credentials and carry out domain takeovers. Many organizations allow anyone from outside of the organization to connect with employees on Microsoft Teams by having no domain restrictions set. This exposes them to cyber threats that can easily bypass standard filters.

Organizations can now detect and remediate threats directly within Microsoft Teams. This also provides organizations with previously unavailable visibility into risks associated with external communications.

The key features of KnowBe4 Messaging Security include:

• Monitoring messages from outside the organization to catch phishing and social engineering attempts early.
• Scans for dangerous default settings in Microsoft Teams to highlight the configurations that allow unrestricted external access and offers steps to fix them with the Posture Monitoring tool.
• A humans-on-the-loop approach where admins can test detection accuracy in report-only mode before enabling automated blocking.
• A unified global list across both email and Microsoft Teams, ensuring that known bad actors are blocked across the channels simultaneously.
• Assigned classification tags and risk levels of Microsoft Teams messages to allow for quick triage by admins, similar to the KnowBe4 Inbound Email Security experience.

"KnowBe4 Messaging Security has been launched with the goal of enhancing, not hindering, teamwork," said Greg Kras, Chief Product Officer at KnowBe4. "This provides organizations with a single, unified console that seamlessly secures both email and chat environments, starting with Microsoft Teams. By removing the uncertainty from chat interactions, we empower employees to collaborate confidently. This ensures that both internal and external collaboration drives business value, rather than introducing new liabilities."

"We recognized that one layer is not enough to detect and neutralize the numerous advanced phishing threats targeting GMMH day-to-day work," said Kevin Orritt, Cyber Security Manager at GMMH. "KnowBe4 Defend not only provides an additional layer of defense but also supplements our security awareness training. Defend's clickable banners allow employees to continuously develop their cybersecurity awareness."

KnowBe4 Messaging Security will be available in June 2026. Learn more at www.knowbe4.com.