Have you ever got to hear that data even in Office 365 environment requires security? That is correct. No data can be considered safe on any platform regardless any security measures taken. For online environment, data breaching through hacking techniques has become a serious issue now that leads to data hampering or data loss in minutes.
Office 365 allows saving a big amount of data on it, so there is a strong need to follow certain practices to ensure that the data saved in cloud is completely safe. Microsoft spends a lot on the security applications and features to protect Office 365 and other clients’ applications data. As the topic of discussion is Office 365, so we will learn further the measures or practices that the Office 365 administrator can follow to secure Office 365 mailboxes.
The most common practice is choosing the best and strong password for the Office 365 account by the administrator. Avoid common passwords, short length of password and repeating of password at any other location. Rather, build a password with combination of alphabets, digits and symbols so that it becomes impossible for any intruder to crack it and access the account. Also, administrator can adopt the multi-factor authentication process to make it hard for any outsider to access the account without permissions on all services.
With Data Loss Prevention feature in Office 365, administrator can determine the classified data and such policies that do not allow sharing your data externally. It will help you to sort out the chances for any data leakage to the outside environment. This feature includes SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and OneDrive within Office stricting users to be compliant with the policies.
Sender Protection Framework lets the other mail channels recognize whether the mail they are receiving is from an authenticated source system or not through a message. Thus it avoids any spam or spoof to be accepted by the other mail channels. Users can enable this SPF along with DKIM and DMARC while setting up a custom domain.
Mailbox Audit Logging feature is provided in Office 365 which you need to activate (as not set by default) using which you can visit under audit log in Office 365 Security & Compliance section in Office 365. It provides the information like user accessed the mailboxes, actions performed by the users with permissions or administrator.
Users can set up different settings to protect important documents being sent accidentally by restricting it with read only rights or providing some encryption on it. Access rights can set up by assigning content expiration rules or imposing restrictions like license requirement on accessing certain documents or mails sent to the unauthorized receivers.
Microsoft has provided this analytical software, Office 365 Secure Score which compares the current activities and settings in Office 365 account to the standard security compliances set by the Microsoft. It helps to analyze what is going wrong with the current settings and where is the need for improvement in terms of data security. It delivers a score on the performance of currently adopted security standards by the administrator and encourages adopting the available security controls in perfect way.
It is an in-built feature in Office 365 which sets certain policies to protect Office 365 mailboxes data from unwanted harmful activities. Users can set notification alerts with this application for each strange activity performed by any person within or outside the organization. This will help to detect the situations like multiple unsuccessful login attempts to the account, non-recognized IP address for login, etc.
For securing the Office 365 mailboxes data in the most efficient way, the administrator must have the most recent security updates provided through Office 365. Office 365 provides regular updates with features and security services which is quite easy to install.
The practices mentioned above to secure Office 365 mailboxes can help but the best way to avoid any future disaster that could harm the data is to take a recent backup. Taking regular backups of Office 365 data is the safest practice for any administrator. For backup of Office 365 mailboxes, you can trust the third-party Office 365 Backup tool. It backup all the Office data whether mailboxes, groups, public folders or archive mailbox in a very swift manner and also offers to make data selection for backup. The advanced tool offers many more amenities which you can learn on its website. It supports all Office 365 plans and subscriptions for backup. Data remains integrated and safe throughout the backup process through this tool.
The blog is all about security of Office 365 mailboxes. Some general practices are described for users helping them to secure the Office 365 data. It includes many in-built features and services provided by Microsoft. A third-party tool is also introduced at the end for taking a secure backup of Office 365 data.
