Data protection is top of mind for most organizations running Office 365. Targeted email attacks are on the rise – especially on O365 and Exchange Online. Attackers increasingly rely on sophisticated methods to infect corporate networks. In response, organizations are taking steps for advanced data protection.
Office 365 comes with malware and spam protection. But how effective are these built-in capabilities? Losses from malware attacks reached $12.5 billion in 2017. Organizations running malware-prone software (like Office 365) must consider the security issues that compromise their data security.
Prevent accidental sharing of sensitive information
Office 365 offers native threat protection that covers a range of security issues. From unsolicited emails to viruses and spyware, the built-in filtering work to ensure data stays secure.
However, the pace of malware evolution requires more advanced threat protection. Otherwise, data security will become an issue.
While Office 365 lets users seamlessly exchange documents and emails, it can’t keep up with evolving data security demands. The anti-spam protection in Office 365 is infrequently updated. Relying on this solution alone could trigger the inappropriate sharing of sensitive data. After all, phishing emails, ransomware and impersonation attacks have the capacity to access confidential and sensitive data. Which could cause significant financial loss and reputation damage.
A third-party anti-spam tool is required to secure the data stored in Office 365 and Exchange Online. An organization can safely rely on Office 365 to create and send sensitive information when they’ve deployed a third-party anti-spam tool. With a third-party anti-spam tool in place, malicious attempts to send sensitive information out of the network will be blocked. Better yet, the attempt will be logged to help prevent further malicious action.
Data Loss Prevention Amid Targeted Attacks
Cyberthreats are growing more difficult to detect. Standard anti-threat tools are proving largely ineffective against looming and evolving threats.
Detecting and filtering out these threats is essential to maintaining uninterrupted business operations. Third party tools that apply advanced machine learning and behavior analysis can identify suspicious traffic and quarantine threatening files before they reach a user’s inbox.
Filtering out the threats is one step in the process. Comprehensive backup of Office 365 data is an equally important second step.
In fact, Microsoft recommends that organizations back-up Office 365 data in case email or documents are corrupted.
Many organizations overlook backing up cloud-based data. They often believe that the backup coverage is part of their cloud service. It’s not. Each and every organization is responsible for making backup copies of their Office 365 files and data.
A backup copy of Office 365 data eliminates the risk of losing access and control over your Office 365 data, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Microsoft Teams. System Administrators can restore mail, calendar, contacts, and task data so that data is always accessible.
With files backed up to the cloud, the organization will only experience minimal downtime. Once the threat is detected, a backup copy can be spun up to a new virtual machine in minutes.
Data Security for Office 365
A commitment to data protection requires the deployment of an anti-spam tool and the guarantee that data can be recovered in the case of an attack.
If a zero-day attacks hit, the ability to roll-back data to the moment when the attack took its toll is crucial.
When choosing third-party data security tools to protect and preserve your instance of Office 365, consider the following best practices for protection, backup and recovery.
An enterprise-grade spam filtering solution should block more than 99% of spam emails, preventing phishing emails, malware and ransomware from reaching employee inboxes. It should also include:
- Anti-spam blocking
- Anti-malware blocking
- Protection against social engineering attacks
- Protection against phishing attacks
- SASL authentication
- Greylisting
- URL blocking
- Layered defence
- Predictive analysis and machine learning
- Email quarantine
With an Office 365 backup, organizations can ensure they always have access to their productivity data. Ideally, tools should:
- Backup Office 365 data and email
- Retrieve Office 365 data from Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business and Microsoft Teams
- Roll-back data history to recover data at the desired point in time
- Provide direct access and control to data backup
- Offer granular advanced search and find functionality
- Increase security with multi-factor authentication
- Protect Office 365 files and data from malicious deletion
Malware Defence and Office 365 Data Protection
Curious about combining an Office 365 anti-spam solution with a backup solution?
HostedBizz offers a full suite of cloud services from servers, backup, and hosted Microsoft solutions.
HostedBizz Anti-Spam ensures that malicious emails do not reach in-boxes. This solution, along with the Cloud backup, protects your Office 365 data from security threats and quickly restores individual Office 365 emails, files and sites.
All HostedBizz solutions are 100% Canadian, requiring no additional hardware or no staff training. With solutions that can be activated in a matter of minutes, it’s a no brainer to deploy this level of protection against cyberthreats. To learn more about HostedBizz Anti-Spam or Cloud backup, contact our Account Management team today.