Moving your organization to the cloud means trusting your most valuable data and documentation to a 3rd party provider. It can be frightening, and the details of modern technological security can be difficult to fully understand. Large scale providers like Microsoft offer the latest in security features and backups for their cloud services. They work hard to stay up-to-date by consistently re-evaluating and revamping internal SOPs and infrastructure. We all know that data security is a top concern and that fear of the unknown is often what holds a business back from making an intelligent and profitable change into new tech. Here we examine Office 365 security protocols and features to understand how they continually ensure that your data is never compromised and always readily available.

Office 365 security infrastructure is divided into two equally important levels – service-level capabilities and customer-specific controls. Service-level is what Microsoft uses to refer to their default technological and operational security features. This represents the baseline of Office 365 security and Microsoft works continuously to keep it as robust and as generally applicable as possible. The company employs a “defense-in-depth” strategy which sees multiple layers of redundant security such that if any one layer were to fail the other layers would smoothly continue protecting your assets. The mission statement of the Microsoft Office 365 security team is to “detect, prevent, and mitigate” a security issue before it ever happens. They achieve this in part through a process they call Security Development Lifecycle – constantly scanning for vulnerabilities, testing and retesting multi-factor authentication and other access points for weakness, and automatically deleting defunct users from the system on a regular basis. Microsoft uses automation to quickly identify any abnormal or suspicious behavior in order to target and resolve issues before anything serious can happen to your files. The Office 365 Security Development Lifecycle models threats on all levels in order to continuously learn more and update protocols to match any new knowledge or developments – the result is that even new Microsoft products are secure from Day 1.

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The second important layer to Microsoft Office 365 security are the customer-specific controls. This represents various customizable aspects that allow your company to maintain the appropriate level of security for compliance with your specific industry. Using these customizations means control over the organizational access and data encryption protocols and better visibility into what Microsoft’s malware protection is doing for your company in real time. For instance “Rights Management Service” (RMS) customizes your data security on the file level, allowing you to restrict access and action level to certain users. Office 365 also offers message encryption – a way to encrypt, send, and decrypt highly confidential correspondence just as easily as regular email. Microsoft’s software is designed to thwart various data interception techniques and thus neutralize the risk of your data falling into the wrong hands. Finally Office 365 security includes customizable malware and spam-filtering or the ability for your business to use a 3rd party solution that will seamlessly integrate with your Microsoft platform.

Switching to the cloud has the general effect of creating a much more secure environment for your data. Though the transition can be complex, trusted providers like Microsoft offer the latest, greatest secure data solutions and the ability to flex and fit your specific needs. They are able to do this and to continually improve their platforms because of almost unlimited resources. If you still need convincing that a move to the cloud is the way to go – check out one of our amazing case studies on how making the switch can take your business to the next level.

 

Office 365 Success Story