The Office 365 suite is the ultimate workspace and productivity software for businesses and organizations. In addition, the suite includes applications and services to take your business’s security to the next level.

Microsoft Office 365 security is one of the more important aspects of the suite. But can M365 protect your business from external and internal actors and natural disasters? This guide will go over the security features and best practices of Microsoft Office cloud services. So with all that said, let’s begin.

Microsoft Office 365 Security – What’s Included?

Considering the widespread use of Office 365, security is one of the more important aspects of the suite. As a result, Microsoft offers several security features that protect native apps, enable data loss prevention policies, and guarantee application uptime.

So what security features do Microsoft 365 includes in its suite?

  • Threat Protection

Advanced threat protection prevents advanced threats from damaging your system, network, and user accounts. The feature works on the principle of early detection. Microsoft Office 365 security aims to protect your email, data applications, connected devices, and emerging threat actors through early detection capabilities.

  • Information Protection

Information protection is the practice of preventing your company’s data from getting into the wrong hands. The suite does this through cross-cloud features, with the ultimate goal of preventing unauthorized access to sensitive information.

  • Risk Management

Microsoft 365 security will assess potential risks to enable threat protection and prevent critical data loss. Risk management hopes to give companies greater control over company data, communications, and compliance.

Most of Microsoft’s security capabilities fall into these three categories of protection. Now, let’s look at best practices to protect the Microsoft 365 suite.

How to Secure Microsoft Office 365?

Although Microsoft does provide users with numerous security features, it follows the “shared responsibility” model. This model tells us that Microsoft takes full responsibility for application availability, whereas you remain responsible for data loss prevention, user management, and security configuration.

Here are the best security practices to ensure sensitive data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands:

Multi-Factor Authentication

Microsoft Office 365 allows users to set up multi-factor authentication. The feature aims to provide users with an additional layer of security by requesting to enter a randomized code from the authentication application or code sent through email.

You can Perform multi-factor authentication to protect your Office 365 account by allowing you to control access across M365 applications.

Mobile Device Management

Mobile Device Management (MDM) is a company-wide policy to control company data access. Many businesses and organizations enforce a BYOD (bring your own device) policy regarding smartphones. Unfortunately, this means employees access crucial company data from their private smartphones.

As one might imagine, losing phones or tablets could present serious security issues, as was the case a few years back with the SolarWinds attack.

With MDM, companies can prevent unauthorized access to applications and gain more control over how company data is used on mobile devices.

Tracking User Activities

We can enable policies in Microsoft Office on the tenant level for tracking user and administrator accounts and activities. In addition to tracking, Microsoft will issue alerts in case of data loss incidents.

These policies apply to all Microsoft applications and services, including Microsoft Teams, Outlook, SharePoint Online, Azure AD, and more. You will need to create these policies in the Microsoft 365 Compliance Center.

Email Encryption

Email remains the number one attack vector within the Office 365 suite. Hackers and threat actors will look to compromise user accounts through phishing attacks, ransomware, and malicious links sent through email.

To prevent the risk of these threats, companies can implement email encryption policies that protect the contents of email messages. In addition, a coworker’s encryption-less email in your inbox can hint at a potential threat actor.

Email encryption also protects company data from getting into the wrong hands by preventing unauthorized access to sensitive information.

Conclusion

Office 365 includes several additional security features to boost your Microsoft secure score. But using the best security practices will prevent data loss from a potentially compromised account. It’s also important to remember that Microsoft aims to stop threats before they can do any damage to your organization.

Therefore, get up to speed with the best security practices to prevent data breaches and the loss of crucial company data.