If you work from home or have the majority of your team working remotely, security more important than ever – especially with cybercrime rising sharply during the pandemic, seeing Australians losing over $300 million to scams in the last year.
While Microsoft 365’s suite of services is the best productivity platform out there, your business still isn’t impervious to cybercrime. You can mix and match Microsoft services that best suit your company and employees, but did you know you can configure the security features?
This blog post will explain how you can optimise Microsoft 365 for the right security features, settings, and best practises for your business.
Microsoft 365 security features
There are a number of security features and best practises built into Microsoft 365 that you can configure to your business environment, including:
Microsoft Defender: provides security, anti-malware, and anti-phishing protection for Windows PCs and other devices.
Endpoint Protection and Response: automatically scans and analyses endpoint logs to detect signs of compromise, such as elevated network traffic volume, unauthorised changes to configuration settings, and unusual network behaviour.
Threat and Vulnerability Management: technologies and processes used to assess, monitor, and respond to threats and vulnerabilities.
Identity and Access Management: securely manages and secures user identities, devices, access rights and policies.
Strong password policy
Strong passwords are the foundation of any good security strategy. Unfortunately, many people use weak passwords, or never change their passwords, making it much easier for cybercriminals to brute force their way into user accounts.
Implement strong password policies that are at least 12 characters long, and contain a mix of letters, numbers, and special characters. Your users should change these passwords regularly.
Implement multi-factor authentication
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a method of increasing the security of user accounts by requiring multiple means of verifying a user’s identity. Some examples include verifying the account owner’s phone number, email address, or a personal code sent to the account owner’s registered email address.
Manage and monitor user accounts
With Azure Active Directory, you can create, manage, and monitor user accounts. You can also use it for multi-factor authentication and to store account credentials. It also provides you with a central location where you can store user information, as well as customise templates for employee profiles.
It is a robust monitoring tool that will help you keep track of user activity across all of your systems, whether they’re on-premises or in the cloud. Monitoring is especially important if you’re handling sensitive data, like payment details or personal medical records, or need to handle a remote workforce.
Manage and monitor user accounts
With Azure Active Directory, you can create, manage, and monitor user accounts. You can also use it for multi-factor authentication and to store account credentials. It also provides you with a central location where you can store user information, as well as customise templates for employee profiles.
It is a robust monitoring tool that will help you keep track of user activity across all of your systems, whether they’re on-premises or in the cloud. Monitoring is especially important if you’re handling sensitive data, like payment details or personal medical records, or need to handle a remote workforce.
Configure file-sharing permissions
Having a strong system of file-sharing permissions across your company’s Microsoft accounts is an essential part of a secure IT infrastructure. It can help prevent data leakage between your employees, and ensure that critical documents are kept out of the hands of unauthorised users.
With these permissions set up properly, any file-sharing activity that takes place on an account will be seen by only those who are authorised to see it.
Encrypt emails
All data in transit and at rest should be encrypted unless necessary to decrypt it. Microsoft’s email encryption will protect your business’ sensitive information while in transit. When users send and receive emails, they’re protected by end-to-end encryption, meaning the message is scrambled before it even leaves the sender’s computer. It also means that the message can’t be deciphered if it ends up in the hands of a third party like a hacker.
Enable email encryption by logging into the Outlook portal and selecting “Encryption” under the Settings tab. This is particularly useful if you have employees working remotely and sending sensitive data via email.
Train your users
All the cyber security in the world is rendered redundant if your users don’t know how to spot a phishing attack. If an employee isn’t properly trained on how to use the technology that surrounds them, it could be easy for them to make a mistake that allows malicious threats access to sensitive information, or even compromise a company’s systems altogether.
By investing in security and Microsoft 365 training, you can help ensure that your employees are aware of the risks posed by these threats and know how best to protect themselves and your company against them, as well as increasing your employees’ confidence when using any Microsoft apps or programs.
Let the Microsoft experts optimise your M365 environment
Microsoft 365 comes with powerful security features that can help you keep your business safe online. To ensure your company is protected as much as possible, there are a number of best practices that you can follow to protect your data while keeping it accessible to your staff and customers.
The Microsoft specialists at Itopia can help you optimise your Microsoft 365 environment for optimal security, based on your business’ day-to-day tasks, and even provide security and Microsoft training programs for your employees.
