8 Microsoft Office 365 Security Tips To Reduce Data Loss

More than four in ten organizations are in the process of implementing Office 365 or are already using it. It thus comes as no surprise that revenue for Microsoft’s flagship cloud-based email and collaboration solution has increased nearly 70% year-over-year in Q2 2016 compared to 2015. The solution appears to continue to be growing in popularity—with signs of further traction in the large enterprises.

Yet, even with a slew of new security tools and security and compliance guidance offered by the Redmond-based software giant, there are still things that should be done to protect this critical business system. A recent announcement of an authentication bypass should be enough to cause some pause on the topic of Office 365 security.

Risk can come in many shapes and forms; compromises can come from many methods and angles. Some we can control -- some we cannot. Why leave anything to chance? We have the power to ensure that our reputation does not get tainted as a result of something we could have stopped or at least slowed down.

Organizations shouldn’t shy away from this increasingly popular service; rather, they should just take the time to understand the requirements to secure the environment and protect the users and their data from malicious activity, loss and misuse. To this end, there are a number of baseline security actions to take in Office 365 to help mitigate some of these risks. This slideshow is geared toward highlighting a handful of those actions.

Note: The team at imsmartin thanks BCC Risk Advisory/Edgescan, Centrify, DatumSec and Netskope for their contributions that led to this slide collection.