Protect Your Data from Cybersecurity Attacks
According to the U.S National Cyber Security Alliance, “nearly 60 percent of small companies who have been victims of a cybersecurity attack are unable to sustain their businesses after six months.” Ironically, more than two-thirds of those businesses who overcame a cyber-attack are unwilling to act upon the attack and secure their systems. It is clear that small businesses either don’t have enough money invested in cyber defense or don’t have a strategy or plan to detect threats, protect data, and reduce damages the moment they happen.
Klarinet recently aired our October – Tech Talk. Matt Fishman, Director of Solutions Delivery, broke down all the latest news and hacked around Microsoft Office 365 Updates. As the Director of Business Development, I discussed with our team and audience the different ways to secure their Office 365 environments to stay a step ahead of cyber attackers.
From the start, Microsoft Office has had a security posture to protect data and users from all levels of a company. If you’re a Microsoft customer, you are provided with a cost-effective way of securing data in one central spot; however, not all customers are taking advantage of this security perimeter. Microsoft 365 has a lot of technically advanced applications, bundled in one subscription.
So, what you get are the business productivity applications (Office, Exchange, OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint, Yammer, etc.), the Enterprise Mobility + Security Suite, and the Windows 10 Enterprise as a subscription. Nonetheless, you can purchase a license and selectively decide which solutions you want to buy. When bundled together, you receive a better cost, the full set of tools, and an ability to secure your digital workplace experience fully.
With this in mind, it is necessary to look into all that Microsoft 365 offers. From a business standpoint, five main buckets need to be addressed when considering security:
- How users access information, where they can access it from, and who can grant permissions?
- How do these users get identified when they’re outside the network?
- How do you secure the sharing of classified information?
- How are we protecting and managing the security across our entire network and Cloud Data?
- How can we detect outsiders trying to breach into our system?
Azure Active Directory
Microsoft 365 addresses these five buckets and gives businesses peace of mind. One of the critical components of the cloud security suite bundled with Microsoft 365 is the Azure Active Directory (AAD) premium product. This product allows you to implement Multi-Factor Authentication, Conditional Access Policies, and Single Sign-On for all your business applications. So, if somebody leaves the network and connects from another network/device remotely, they will have to go through a security clearance that grants access based on verifying their identity. Also, AAD helps increase security by restricting access to cloud data from specific networks or locations (Conditional Access Policies).
Taking a look into information protection, it is necessary to ask how you can secure data stored in the cloud. Azure Information Rights Protection policies are another critical component that works across all office applications and various other file types. These policies help protect intellectual property, restricting data from being downloaded or shared without approval, and implementing time-based access. The cost associated with a data breach or data loss are substantial; it’s just a matter of taking precaution, configuring the right policies, and having somebody that can also manage those policies (whether it’s an in-house expert or Microsoft partner).
Threat Protection
Threat Protection is one of the more popular products of Microsoft 365. It helps secure data from cyber-attacks, detecting suspicious activity, and avoiding ransomware is both an educational and technical responsibility that all organizations need to consider. Microsoft 365 provides companies with an advanced threat protection software that detects these threats and blocks outsiders.
I often find that many of my customers own the cloud security software (EM+S) or Microsoft 365 already but are only using the Office 365 components of that suite of tools. Klarinet Solutions specializes in optimizing your Microsoft 365 integration, implementing policies to secure your data, and developing a streamlined process that supports business objectives. If you want to hear more insightful hacks and ways to leverage technology, keep an eye on our blog.
