Office 365 – 7 Best Security Practices in 2021

Back in 2011, Microsoft launched Office 365, and since then, its popularity has kept growing all around the world. As a productivity suite, Office 365 gives you access to several top-notch applications and features, enabling you to conduct all tasks efficiently. It focuses on providing a collaborative environment where teams can collaborate on documents, share their thoughts, and work together.

Other than top-notch features, the users today want a software to be reliable in another key aspect, i.e., security. As per the Gartner report, the cybersecurity market is expected to worth more than $170.4 billion by 2022. It indicates how much importance security measures mean to enterprises and small businesses.

Office 365 acknowledges the need for rigid security measures to protect the data of users. That’s why you get access to different top-notch security features, such as conditional access, multi-factor authentication, and many more. But as an Office 365 user, it should be your priority to implement all the required security measures effectively. Following are the 7 best security practices you can adopt for Office 365 security:

1. Strong Password

The basic of all security measures is to have a strong password. It is the easiest security approach to keep the data and files secure. A long password is considered more secure compared to a short or simple password. To set up a strong password, below are the few tips you should follow:

• Make your password complex and long with a combination of alphabets (lowercase and uppercase), special characters, and numbers. For example, “Smith123” is not a strong password, while “Ssmith!*43” is a strong one.
• Different applications should have different passwords.
• Regularly change passwords in all applications.

Setting up a strong password is not difficult, but it brings more data security.

2. Configure Conditional Access

Microsft Office 365 provides the conditional access feature, which lets you give access of tools and applications only to individuals belonging to certain locations. For example, if you have no business activity in a country like New Zealand, you can block access for that country. But that’s not permanent, which implies that you can unblock the access whenever you want. This way, you can ensure that no kind of foreign login attempt is made against your Office 365 suite.

3. Set up Multi-Factor Authentication

A highly-recommended security practice is to have Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). MFA is a multiple steps authentication that compliments passwords to provide enhanced security. It can be set up easily and asks to login with the password, along with code verification from your email, phone number, or text message.

4. Enable Reporting and Auditing

As an Office 365 user, you get access to many reporting and auditing features from Microsoft’s Security and Compliance Center. These features are designed to keep you updated and secure from any kind of threat. Once you enable reporting and auditing features, you will have complete insights about all the suite activities. You can also set up security alerts for applications, OneDrive, and mailbox.

5. Use Microsoft Secure Score

Microsoft Secure Score is a security analytics tool that gives better insights about your security configuration. With the help of machine learning, it monitors your activities and security configurations and compares them with the Microsoft baseline. Afterward, it gives a numerical score to help you take actions to enhance your security configuration.

6. Enable OneDrive Folder Protection

When digital data holds tremendous importance today, you never know when a hardware malfunction, power loss, or cyber-attack can result in data loss. Therefore, having data backup is another primary security measure you should adopt. By enabling OneDrive Folder Protection, you can let your desktop and document folders backed up in the cloud.

7. Integrate Microsoft Cloud App Security

Microsoft Cloud App Security integration with Office 365 lets you identify and avoid doubtful activities. The tool provides data control, visibility, and other advanced analytics to provide top-notch protection from all kinds of threats.

Conclusion

The importance of security tools is on the continuous rise due to growing cybersecurity concerns all over the world. But security tools should be easy to use. Because in many scenarios, a security initiative does not turn out successful because it made it difficult for users to do the job effectively. When it comes to Office 365 security aspects, all the above practices are easy to implement and provide insights that are also simple to understand. Therefore, with minimal efforts and utilizing a great set of security features, you can make Office 365 an unbreachable suite.

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