Microsoft 365, (the platform formerly known as Office 365), has quickly become one of the most popular productivity suites in the world – and for good reason.
Not only does it offer the full complement of office apps – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and so on – in both cloud and desktop form, but it now also delivers the collaborative power of Microsoft Teams. On top of that, Microsoft 365 also offers a host of cloud services like OneDrive and SharePoint, as well as a number of security and compliance features out of the box.
Pretty comprehensive, right?
For covering the basics of IT security, the default feature set will be just enough. But if your company works with sensitive data, does a lot of remote work, or simply wants the peace-of-mind that comes with enhanced security – you’ve got some options.
Something to remember…
Before we get into the specific upgrade options for Microsoft 365, it’s worth noting that, while some of these options are available out of the box, they do require significant setup. Others may also require an updated license.
If this sounds confusing or time-consuming, don’t worry – the expert team at Get Support can take care of all of this for you and get you up and running in no time.
The Microsoft Security Score
One of the tools our team uses to supercharge your security is the Microsoft Security Score.
Put simply, this is a numeric representation of how many security measures your business has put in place.
As time goes on, your Security Score will change based on the circumstances, giving you the opportunity to take action to improve it. For example, if a certain technology is no longer supported, your score will advise you to remove any dependency on it.
By working with the Get Support team to keep your security measures up to date, you don’t need to worry about your score too much – but it’s still a great way to get at-a-glance info about how well-protected your business is.
Now that you’re familiar with the process, let’s look at 5 great reasons to upgrade your level of Microsoft 365 support today.
#1: Basic Microsoft 365 Security Enhancements
Let’s begin with the simple stuff.
Here are a few quick wins you can apply to enhance your Microsoft 365 security measures almost immediately:
- Prevent email forwarding to protect your sensitive internal data.
- Enable Audit Data to save a 90-day (or up to a year) activity log for all users and administrators.
- Enable Mailbox Auditing to log specific actions taken by mailbox owners or admins.
- Customise your Microsoft 365 login page to prevent phishing attacks.
#2: Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
There are now more identity-based cyberattacks than ever before.
Even something as simple as a brute-force password or “spray” attack can give hackers access to some accounts, so it’s worth defending against. Luckily, one of the best solutions is also the simplest: MFA, or Multi-Factor Authentication.
Microsoft 365 uses a service called Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to manage user identities, and as part of that, you’ll have access to “security defaults” as part of any Microsoft 365 plan.
Security defaults includes:
- Multi-Factor Authentication enabled for all users. Each user will need to register for using the Microsoft Authenticator app within 14 days of their first (or next) login.
- Blocking of legacy authentication. Because many of the most common cyberattacks use vulnerabilities via older software – like Office 2010 – Azure AD will block authentications coming via these routes.
Want to take your MFA security even further? Ask our team about Conditional Access, which gives you the power to customise the way your organisation uses MFA to make the process smoother for your users.
#3: Secure Mail Flow
Email is still at the heart of modern business.
For that reason, you’ll want to be sure your email setup is as secure as possible. You can do this with Microsoft 365 by making changes to the way email flows to (and from) your organisation.
Here are our recommendations to level-up your email security:
- Use Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to prevent spoofing of your domain. In the simplest terms, SPF allows you to add a record to the back-end of your domain which will verify any outbound emails. When you receive an email with an invalid SPF record, it will either be sent to spam or filtered out – and the same protection applies the other way, too.
- Use DKIM to digitally sign your emails. DKIM, or DomainKeys Identified Mail for the more technically minded, is a security system which essentially embeds an encrypted digital signature in the email itself which is tied to your domain. DKIM gives recipients the peace of mind to know the email really did come from your organisation.
- Tie it all together with DMARC. The final piece of the puzzle is yet another technical acronym: DMARC, or Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance. (Quite the mouthful, we know). DMARC is designed to take care of emails which aren’t authenticated by either SPF or DKIM, allowing you to send them to spam immediately or just block them entirely.
#4: Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
Here’s another security measure which protects your business from malicious emails, links, and other cyber-nasties which can hide in messages to your organisation.
Advanced Threat Protection, or ATP, comes in two different flavours: Plan 1 and Plan 2. (Catchy, right?).
Any business subscribed to Microsoft 365 Business Premium will have access to Plan 1, which offers, among other things:
- Safe Attachments will route email attachments to a dedicated safe environment where they’ll be checked for malicious content. If nothing is found, the email and attachment are forward to the mailbox.
- Safe Links actively verifies a link (in either an email of Office file) for safety as soon as the user clicks it. The scan happens instantaneously; any safe links will be opened normally, and any malicious links will be blocked.
- Anti-phishing protection leverages machine learning models and sophisticated algorithms to detect cyberattackers impersonating your internal users.
- ATP for SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams provides active protection for collaboration apps by identifying malicious files in collaborative spaces.
Want even more threat protection? By upgrading your Microsoft 365 plan to the relevant tier (our team can help here), you’ll also gain access to Plan 2, which delivers, among other things:
- Threat Trackers are real-time reports which show you active cyber threats around the globe, and even tracks their progress so you can assess their threat to you.
- Attack Simulator may sound like a videogame, but it is in fact an advanced tool which allows you to identify potential gaps in your security. By running a realistic – but simulated – cyberattack, you can test the true strength of your security measures.
- Automated investigation and response (AIR) is like having a virtual security analyst on your team 24/7. The AIR system saves your business time by taking the first remedial steps as soon as a threat is detected, and can deal with several with no human intervention.
#5: Microsoft 365 Backup
Our last recommendation relates to something that many businesses overlook: backing up of cloud-based files.
The natural assumption is that, because Microsoft 365 saves your files on a remote server, they’re safe and protected from any form of cyberattack. While it’s true that a remote server offers more security by backing up your local files, and that Microsoft distribute stored data across multiple datacentres, it’s not an infallible solution.
Especially important if you deal with sensitive client data, it’s worth considering a third-party backup solution for your Microsoft 365 files.
And, of course, here at Get Support, we’ve got the ideal backup solution – just ask a member of the team for the details and we’ll get you covered.
Upgrade your Microsoft 365 security measures today
With a whopping 421 million individual data breaches per month, keeping your data secure has never been more important. With that in mind, we hope this guide has given you some insight into what’s possible for your business when you upgrade your Microsoft 365 plan with Get Support.
If you’d like to find out more, or get your Microsoft 365 suite upgraded today, the Get Support team is here to take care of everything for you.
To get started, call us today on 01865 59 4000. And, as always with Get Support, we’ll explain every step of the process in plain English – guaranteed.
