The future of business is on the cloud. As we develop new productivity, collaboration, and remote work technologies, we forget that Office 365 already does that. Office 365 is a suite of collaboration tools that take organizations to the next level.
With Office 365, we get increased collaboration, enhanced productivity, and ensured business continuity on and off the office. But how does Office 365 security work? Is Microsoft capable of protecting your organization while on the cloud?
We must understand how Microsoft Office 365 security works to get the answer. We will look at that in this short guide. So, let’s start.
Microsoft Office 365 – What Is It?
Microsoft Office 365 is a cloud productivity and collaboration suite with numerous tools, apps, and services. The suit offers the classic Office applications like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, and other services such as Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Defender, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Outlook, and more.
The collection of apps, tools, and services makes Office 365 one of the best suites for your organization. But there’s one area we must discuss to determine if Office 365 is the right suite for you – cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity is an ongoing topic. It is a topic we must discuss as businesses become increasingly susceptible to cyber threats. And the size of the business doesn’t even matter. Everyone is a legitimate target in the eyes of hackers and cybercriminals.
So how does Microsoft Office 365 security work? Moreover, does the suite offer sufficient threat protection? Let’s find out.
How Does Microsoft Office 365 Security Work?
Microsoft employs a model called “the shared model.” This model tells us that Microsoft isn’t necessarily responsible for your data. Instead, it is responsible for ensuring uptime across the suite.
On the other hand, data protection remains your responsibility. Microsoft does offer numerous security tools and capabilities but encourages you to pursue third-party tools for total protection. So, should we trust Microsoft with our data?
Microsoft makes it seamless for your business to perform the necessary tasks on the cloud. On the cybersecurity front, Microsoft Office 365 allows you to create policies on data protection risks, set up privileged access management, formulate security configuration, and more.
The suite does this through numerous services, such as the Cloud Access Security Broker (CAS), Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Azure Active Directory, and more.
These services help you set up anti-phishing protection for email to stop phishing attacks, give administrator accounts control access on the tenant level, detect malicious links, and numerous other cybersecurity controls.
But these security features aren’t necessarily the best at detecting threats. Therefore, businesses should always follow Microsoft’s advice and use third-party tools for total protection.
How Third-Party Tools Offer Cyber Threat Protection for Your Organization?
Stopping data breaches becomes a challenge when data prices are so high. Hackers actively seek to compromise systems and gain access to confidential information. They do this to gain something in return. And cyber threats are getting bigger and bolder in their ways to gain your most valuable data.
So how do third-party tools protect against data breaches?
Simple, they offer tools for total protection. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to protect your organization while on Office 365. Here are a few tips on how to protect your organization from cyber threats while using Office 365.
Tips to Achieve Office 365 Total Protection
Below are several tips we recommend businesses employ and protect their cloud environments. Let’s see what those are:
- Perform Regular Backups
Backups are essential for business continuity. Luckily, you can back up data from nearly every Office 365 application and service. Even though some organizations use third-party tools, you can back up your Office 365 cloud environment by exporting Outlook and SharePoint Online mailboxes, exporting data from Microsoft Teams, backup essential OneDrive files, and more.
- Protect Your Email
Email is an important communication channel for organizations. After all, most organizations rely on email for external and internal communications. You can protect your email against all security threats by using Microsoft’s email encryption capabilities, multi-factor authentication, and scanning incoming emails for malicious links and files.
- Perform Unified Audit Logs
Microsoft allows you to stay on top of all user and admin activity by reviewing logs. We can do this through the UAL (Unified Audit Log) feature, which grants admins access to all activity on the Office 365 suite. There, admins can look for malicious activity, strange anomalies, and other threats across your cloud apps and cloud services.
Conclusion
We must understand how Microsoft Office 365 security works to understand if the suite can protect your organization on the cloud. While you will find conflicting reports, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Organizations must also consider Microsoft’s advice and use third-party tools to achieve total protection.
Pair these tools with the Office 365 suite and ensure business continuity by preventing threats from harming your organization.
