Rapid business changes are driving organizations to take advantage of powerful productivity applications such as Office 365. A Forbes report reveals that office suite users exceeded 250 million, bringing Microsoft’s market total up to 87.5% by March 2020. A significant reason for this massive increase is Office 365’s ability to increase productivity and help businesses stay competitive while simultaneously reducing waste and security risks.
Unlike any other productivity suites, Office 365 is brimming with extensive security features that protect businesses from ransomware and malware that are relatively common in electronic mails. A separate Forbes report adds that roughly 320 billion spam emails are sent daily. That said, business administrators should know Office 365 best practices to maximize the full capacity of the software.
1. Enable Multi-Factor Authentication
As cybercriminals become more skilled and sophisticated, the need for business leaders to employ stringent network security measures is vital in counteracting these threats. While strong passwords with unique characters provide a good level defense, emerging and innovative phishing techniques have made it possible for hackers to decipher even the most complex passcodes. One way to counteract these sophisticated threats is enabling multi-factor authentication in Office 365.
By using multi-factor authentication, you can establish multiple layers of protection to make it more challenging for hackers to gain access to your account. This is critical for business teams that are spread across several geographic locations and are using unsecured networks in communicating or downloading files. Enabling multi-factor authentication also allows you to increase flexibility and simplify the login process while simultaneously achieving Office 365 security and compliance.
2. Evaluate Access to Specific Admin Sections
Checking users with privileged system access should be on every administrator’s Office 365 best practices checklist. This includes assessing the recent work history of global administrators as well as workload administrators such as Exchange, User management, and SharePoint admins. By doing so, you can keep everyone accountable for their actions and encourage them to be careful when opening or downloading files from unknown sources.
Office 365 is geared with powerful features such as built-in reports that provide you with insights to members that are more vulnerable to attacks. This way, you can educate and secure their networks while simultaneously establishing robust measures to protect your organization’s overall data security. Besides built-in reports, you can also check the Microsoft Secure Score in the Office 365 security admin center to get a more comprehensive idea on potential security threats.
3. Customize Office 365 Login Pages
One of the Office 365 implementation best practices that is often overlooked but equally important as enabling multi-factor authentication is customizing the login pages. By configuring the login pages, you can prevent your employees from falling prey to phishing attacks. Unlike other forms of data penetration, phishing attacks usually occur without an employee even knowing it.
Statistics indicate that nearly half of employees reported that their data had been compromised after logging into a fake phishing page. The advantage of customizing Office 365 login pages is it makes users feel more secure that they are on the right page when entering their user credentials. This way, you can reduce the likelihood of them causing events that would shake your business foundation and overall reputation to the core.
4. Take Advantage of Office Message Encryption
Office message encryption is one of the Office 365 security features that every administrator should be aware of. You can encrypt a message into an unreadable cipher while on transit to protect it from being intercepted or compromised. This increases overall company security and simplifies collaboration efforts, especially for teams that are working remotely.
However, unlike any other encryption tools, the office message encryption automatically decrypts the message for other authenticated 365 users. This way, your recipients will no longer have to use a key to decrypt the message but rather let the central server decipher on their behalf. While this may not seem like a big deal, doing so reduces the stress of having to remember complex encryption keys that are marred with unique characters and phrases which are difficult to take note of.
5. Educate your Users
Office 365 is packed with excellent security features but there is only so much a software solution can do to combat emerging attacks. As the threat landscape continues to become more complex, administrators have to educate their users on how they can use Office 365 in synchronizing directory, reducing security risks, especially since most of the working population are tethered in their homes due to the pandemic.
This can include providing users who took computer science and computer engineering courses that allow them to secure the email flow and configure sender policy framework records or create simple DNS records. In doing so, you reduce the likelihood of malicious actors spoofing your domain while ensuring a safe remote working environment. Training users also makes it easier for you to deploy innovative security recommendations that keep your business compliant with evolving security and compliance protocols.
Increasing Organizational Security with Effective Office 365 Management
Office 365 can be a great tool for businesses to increase its overall security. However, like many software tools, leaders have to manage it properly to realize its full benefits. One of the leading on-premises solutions that can help is Easy365Manager. With an excellent graphic user interface and easy-to-use capabilities, Easy365Manager simplifies user administration and eliminates the need for multiple admin tools to work effectively. It offers a 30-day free trial in addition to its quote-based pricing packages.