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TEAMS.TC.5007 - Anonymous users should not start meetings

Anonymous users should not be allowed to start meetings​

Description​

This test checks if anonymous users are restricted from starting Microsoft Teams meetings.

Policy Statement​

Contoso's company policy requires that anonymous users should not be allowed to start meetings. This prevents unauthorized individuals from creating meetings in your organization's Teams environment and ensures meeting control remains with authenticated users.

Why This Matters​

Security Concerns:

When anonymous users can start meetings:

  • Unauthenticated users can create meetings in your tenant
  • No accountability for meeting creators
  • Risk of creating meetings for malicious purposes
  • Potential for resource abuse
  • Difficulty tracking meeting ownership
Security Risk

Allowing anonymous users to start meetings gives unauthorized individuals the ability to create meetings in your organization's environment without any authentication or accountability.

How to fix​

Disable Anonymous Start Meeting in Teams Admin Center​

  1. Navigate to the Teams admin center - Meeting policies
  2. Select the Global (Org-wide default) policy
  3. Under Participants & guests, locate Let anonymous people start a meeting
  4. Set this option to Off
  5. Click Save

Verify via PowerShell​

# Connect to Teams
Connect-MicrosoftTeams

# Check current anonymous start meeting setting
Get-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity Global | Select-Object AllowAnonymousUsersToStartMeeting

# Disable anonymous start meeting
Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity Global -AllowAnonymousUsersToStartMeeting $false

# Verify the change
Get-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity Global | Select-Object AllowAnonymousUsersToStartMeeting

Impact​

Disabling anonymous start meeting will:

  • ✅ Ensure only authenticated users can start meetings
  • ✅ Maintain accountability for meeting creators
  • ✅ Prevent unauthorized meeting creation
  • ⚠️ Meetings require an authenticated organizer to start
info

With this setting disabled, scheduled meetings will wait in a pre-meeting lobby until an authenticated organizer joins and starts the meeting.