Bolstering your data protection by adopting appropriate security measures will help you maximize the apps offered within Microsoft 365.  

Providing users with seamless communication and scalability, Microsoft 365 remains at the top of the list of productivity and collaboration tools on the market today. Additionally, a particularly attractive feature of Microsoft 365 is its intuitive remote work support, which has become nearly a necessity in today’s working world.  

Thanks to various internally designed defense mechanisms, the security features within Microsoft 365 are also excellent. Still, this doesn’t mean cyberattacks are entirely impossible. Potentially jeopardizing your system, security threats such as malware, data leakage, and unauthorized access still allow hackers with entry points to your data.  

The consequences of these security threats can range from minor disruptions to the operation to severe damage to your business’s reputation, should you fall victim.  

Avoid putting your business at risk by bolstering your security measures. Keep hackers at bay by utilizing these 11 ways to boost data protection for Microsoft 365

IT Support, Microsoft Officer 365

11 Ways to Boost Your Microsoft 365 Data Protection 

1. Educating and Training Your Employees 

While the measures within this list are helpful, they are essentially ineffective if you neglect to educate and train your employees. After all, the primary cause of data breaches is due to human error. 

Schedule employee security education and ongoing training as one of the best ways to boost your data protection. It can begin making them more aware of potential threats and help with guiding them through addressing these threats. 

Don’t forget about new recruitment and be proactive in ensuring new hires undergo in-depth security training. Before granting new employees any access to organizational devices or sensitive data, make sure they have been both educated and trained properly. 

2. Encrypting Emails 

Often the last resort when dealing with data breaches is encrypting sensitive data. But, robust encryption tools can make them unreadable in the unfortunate circumstance that a cyber attacker is able to gain access to your email account.  

Email encryption is always necessary for Microsoft 365 users who share files and emails regularly. 

3. Relying on the Unified Audit Log 

Several Microsoft 365 services are included in the unified audit log, including: 

  • Microsoft Teams 
  • OneDrive 
  • SharePoint Online 
  • Azure AD 

Give administrators insight into malicious actions and activities that are in violation of organizational policies by enabling UAL. 

To connect logs with current log management solutions and monitoring to reveal abnormal activity, you can also begin incorporating your logs into an existing SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) tool. This can also help with improving the overall security of your Microsoft 365 suite. 

4. Integrating Access Control Based on Roles 

Limit the flow of private information across your business through access management. This convenient security feature will establish the users who can access data in your company through access management. 

Prevent ranking-and-filing team members from reading and editing executive-level files is one example of how you can minimize data leaks by.  

5. Deactivating Legacy Protocol Authentication 

Legacy protocols don’t support several security features in Microsoft 365 reducing the chances of intrusion, like MFA. Legacy protocols can create an ideal gateway to your data for hackers looking to target your business.  

Unless your team needs it for older email accounts, stay protected by deactivating legacy protocols, mitigating risks. 

6. Securing Mobile Access 

Especially if your team works remotely, they will often access work via smartphones to view calendars, documents, contacts, and email. So, it should always be a top priority to secure these devices when aiming to protect your business’s data.  

Stay on top of managing your security restrictions, permissions, and policies, and wipe critical information from lost or stolen devices, install Microsoft 365 mobile management features. 

7. Leveraging Policy Alerts 

Establishing your policy notifications in the compliance center of Microsoft 365 will ensure you are meeting your company’s security needs. These notifications can alert employees, providing helpful tips whenever they’re about to send a message to contacts outside your network regarding sending sensitive information.  

Educate your team on safe data sharing methods while safeguarding against data leaks with these notifications. 

8. Employing Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) 

Actively recognizing and preventing threats notorious for bypassing firewall and antivirus defenses is the name of the game for advanced threat protection (ATP). This robust solution promotes understanding of the threats and the integration of data into their analysis by accessing databases updating in real-time. 

It doesn’t matter where the source of the threat arises, ATP will immediately notify you about any attacks, how severe they may be, and the method stopping them. Relying on a database of suspicious sites notorious for phishing attempts or malware delivery and machine learning makes ATP particularly effective at preventing phishing. 

9. Avoiding Public Calendar Sharing 

Sharing and synchronizing schedules with colleagues is enabled via calendar sharing. Public calendar sharing may give adversaries unwanted insight into your business, although this feature may facilitate team collaboration. 

For example, attackers can use a determined time frame to launch malware if your security administrator is on vacation and this information is publicly available. 

10. Incorporating Session Timeouts 

It is common for employees to forget logging out of accounts or locking computers or mobile devices. For hackers, they are granting them access to precious information, ultimately enabling them access to your data.  

Automatically log users out after a certain period of inactivity by incorporating session timeouts into internal networks and accounts. That way, hackers won’t be able to take over a company device and access information that is sensitive. 

11. Activating a Multi-Factor Authentication 

When using a username and password, users in Microsoft 365 have one method to verify their identity. While there are robust password protocols for protection, most people don’t follow them. 

A pivotal role in your data security can stem back to multi-factor authentication (MFA). Verify user identity with a one-time passphrase or another factor that will boost your Microsoft 365 security. Even better, with as much protection as this feature adds, you don’t have to worry about it being difficult to apply. 

Activate a Microsoft feature enforcing MFA in security defaults in all administrator accounts once you’ve enabled MFA. Even those without an administrator’s permission can and should begin implementing MFA. After all, any accounts in your ecosystem can still be a threat to apps and services.  

Managed Services, Microsoft O365

Always Stay One Step Ahead of Data Protection 

The Microsoft 365 experience is known for being incredibly smooth, offering users countless convenient and intuitive tools. You might even find yourself forgetting to protect your data with such a seamless process, but you must remain vigilant. 

Leaving your system readily vulnerable to hackers is a massive gamble unless you actively apply these steps for data protection this article mentions. With the help of these practical steps, you’ll find that you can dramatically decrease your business’s security threats.