Unlicensed OneDrive for Business accounts will be frozen, and Microsoft wants money to render them active again

Microsoft is apparently rolling out new policies for OneDrive Business users, and they’re not good news. Starting January 27, 2025, the tech giant will begin freezing unauthorized accounts for over 90 days. The Microsoft argument? Unauthorized accounts are a security and compliance headache.

So, what does “unlicensed” mean in this context? We’re talking about accounts that haven’t been activated, expired or are not associated with an organization’s Microsoft or Office 365 subscription.

According to reports, IT managers can license these accounts and give them new life, hide them, or suspend and delete them. If nothing is done, Microsoft will automatically take over the accounts.

Organizations can access archived data for $0.05 per gigabyte per month and an additional $0.60 per gigabyte. Administrators will begin to be billed for these services in April 2025.

For admins looking to get ahead of the game, Microsoft suggests heading to the SharePoint Admin Center. You can create a report about unauthorized OneDrive users and download it as a CSV file there. And if you care about user-friendliness, Microsoft is on top of it. An interactive UI for user monitoring and other information is planned to be released by January 2025.

Microsoft’s move indicates that the company is improving security and compliance by releasing these OneDrive for Business policies. But it also raises questions. Is this the best way to deal with unauthorized accounts? More importantly, how will this affect organizations?