Microsoft aim for their Office 365 product to meet an organisations needs concerning both data usage and content security compliance. In order to fulfil content security and data usage compliancy Microsoft offer a range of diverse products and services.
As we push further into 2018, organisations are under growing pressure to adhere and be complicit with certain business industry standards and regulations. Office 365 offers multiple, easy to use, Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies for organisations, which have the main purpose of protecting sensitive data and preventing unintentional exposure of data. The DLP policies give users the ability to identify and monitor sensitive information across multiple platforms such as One Drive for Business and Exchange online. Within the Security and compliance centre, you can view and manage DLP policies enabling you to assess how your organisation is complying with various said policies.
It is reported in a number of annual statistics that users are the biggest source of data breaches and that figures has been consistently rising. It is also perhaps even more worrying that these types of breaches are inadvertent and that’s what DLP is designed to protect against.
Office 365 also employs Data encryption in order to secure sensitive data for consumers both within an organisation and whilst in transit. Perhaps most notable is their file protection system within SharePoint and Microsoft Exchange. Data Encryption involves the process of encoding data, and this encoded data is only accessible if it is decrypted first. To decrypt this data you need to have an encryption key that authorises appropriate users. In some services such as Exchange online it is now also possible to utilise “bring your own key” rendering data unreadable even to the service provider.
The protection methods already in operation and being developed are becoming increasingly important especially as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) comes into force as of May 25th 2018 and focuses on data protection within the European Union and how we export data (personal data especially) to businesses outside this jurisdiction. Office 365 offer multiple ways in which to assist organisations with maintaining GDPR compliancy including real-time dashboards with actionable recommendations as well as a built in audit tool for consistent monitoring.
Office 365 offer an advanced threat protection service for their users that in summary protects customer data against malware/viruses and unknown attacks. This service is an added feature, which for a small cost (per users) can be an addition to Office 365 subscriptions. The stand out benefit of the Advanced Threat Protection service is that it protects customer data in a real-time cycle, which enables customer’s data to be protected from online threats all day every day. For example, Advanced Threat protection includes a tool called safe attachments; this gives organisations the power to stop potentially malicious attachments affecting their messaging environment. As touched upon earlier this is achievable using emails, which are automatically analysed through a real-time cycle constantly monitored for suspicious activity.
Office 365 has also recently introduced intelligence sharing with Windows Defender Advanced Threat protection. This service allows admins to see malware activity across Office 365 and the latest Desktop Windows Operating Systems. Malware activity is monitored in real-time, allowing administrator’s further resilience in addition to Windows 365’s Advanced Threat protection. Perhaps the main benefit of Windows Defender ATP is that being cloud-powered it has the ability to modify its defences and deploy to devices quickly in order to react quickly to evolving threats to business data.
VooServers can provide and support Office 365 licences including Standard, Business and Business Premium in addition to Microsoft Azure and AWS cloud services. As an organisation, VooServers also offers a plethora of Microsoft licences including antivirus, database and customer relationship management software. For further information on security and the upcoming GDPR enforcement date, please contact our support team via support@vooservers.com. Alternatively, if this article has helped you decide on a potential O365 deployment then please contact sales our sales team on 01622524203 or by email at sales@vooservers.com
By Luke Germano on April 20th, 2018
