Office 365 offers numerous benefits to companies and organizations looking to transition to the cloud. Some benefits include better organization, collaboration, and productivity. But one inherent advantage to using cloud services is heightened security for Office 365.

Security is always a topic of discussion in all things IT-related. Since companies are adopting a hybrid approach, cloud technologies spearhead the transition. And there are few better options than Office 365.

This guide will explain how companies are configuring and securing the Office 365 suite. In addition, we will discuss best practices and approaches to improve your cybersecurity. With all that said, let’s start.

Best Approaches for Office 365 Security and Configuration

Cybersecurity experts recommend a series of best approaches or practices for the security and configuration of the Office 365 suite. They are the following:

Preventing Unauthorized Access on Tenant Level

The Office 365 suite provides users access to numerous apps and services, from the base Microsoft Office apps to Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and SharePoint Online. Each of these apps allows users to log in and perform their daily tasks.

The challenge is to prevent unauthorized access to employee tenant accounts. So how do companies do it? One of the standout features of the suite is a security feature called two-factor authentication. Two-factor or multi-factor authentication is a security feature that requires users to input a code every time they log in to their accounts.

The code is sent to users via a smartphone app. The MFA code is randomly-generated, making it difficult for hackers to guess it. Moreover, the code refreshes every sixty seconds, giving you enough time to enter your account. That way, even the most skilled hacker will have difficulty getting through the added security later.

Preventing Data Theft Through Encryption

Encryption is yet another highlight security feature of Office 365. Encryption adds another layer of security for all of your file-sharing needs. However, considering organizations collaborate with outside people through apps such as SharePoint Online and Microsoft Teams, it begs the question of how secure is the data you’re sharing.

Your organization might employ strong protection for internal file sharing, but what about sharing outside your organization? It’s safe to say that threat actors can easily intercept files and documents the moment you send them to a person on the outside.

So what’s the solution? The solution is encryption. Since companies primarily rely on email for communication and collaboration, we can turn to encryption to make it more secure. For example, Microsoft Office 365 allows users to use encryption to protect messages from Outlook and Teams.

The way encryption works is simple. Each user gets an encryption and decryption key. Users can use the encryption key to encrypt messages and specify which users can view the contents of the messages. Encryption is an essential data loss prevention method and crucial for anti-phishing protection.

Preventing Privilege Abuse

Office 365 administrator accounts are responsible for granting permissions to users. But an unskilled administrator will grant more permissions than users need. This presents a security risk. Moreover, it directly compromises your cloud environment if a hacker manages to access data from cloud apps.

So how are companies preventing data protection risks? One way to prevent data loss is to use Privileged Access Management (PAM). PAM is part of Microsoft Cloud App Security (CAS), a cloud access security broker for Microsoft Cloud Services.

The way PAM works is simple. PAM allows administrator accounts to grant or deny access to privileged tasks. Users with privileged access can easily see their access revoked in case of a potential data breach.

PAM is an essential feature of Microsoft 365 that ensures information protection.

Preventing Data Loss Through Audit Logs

Audit logs is yet another native data loss prevention feature. This feature is disabled by default, meaning administrators must enable audit logs for greater visibility over user activity.

This feature keeps records of user activity – it stores information on every user activity on the Office 365 tenant. In addition, administrators can monitor malicious activity by increasing audit log retention on Microsoft accounts.

Preventing data loss is essential to maintain compliance requirements. This includes, among others, communication compliance. Other security features for compliance include Microsoft Information Governance (MIG).

Prevent Data Loss Through Backups

The final security and compliance feature of the Office 365 suite is backups. Backups are essential for business continuity. Organizations must find ways to increase threat protection without compromising sensitive information.

One way to do that is by keeping backups of your most important data. For example, office 365 allows users to back up entire mailboxes, SharePoint sites, and Microsoft Teams chats. To ensure your organization does the same, you must employ a series of policies.

For example, make sure to back up data from the most important apps and services at least once a week. But an important backup best approach is to keep backups locally and on the cloud. Having more than one backup location will ensure your data is never compromised.

Your local backups face numerous security risks. Therefore, a smart practice is to store backups on the cloud. That way, if your local backup is compromised, you can always turn to your cloud backups for data continuity.

Conclusion

That concludes this guide and the five best approaches for security and compliance in Office 365. Companies use these approaches to ensure data continuity and, thus, business continuity. Without these approaches, businesses are risking losing their most important data. So don’t fall victim to the many security risks the cloud faces by using the best practices for Office 365 total protection.