Just because you’re using a cloud service from a well-known company like Microsoft, doesn’t mean it’s automatically safe from being hacked or losing data due to user error or malicious intent.
In May of 2019, an alarming increase in hacker activity targeting Microsoft Office 365 was detected. Some of the activities they were able to accomplish on hacked user accounts included sending over 1.5 millionmalicious and spam emails.
In 34% of the hacked accounts, the criminals set up rules in Office 365 to hide their activity, which allowed then to collect all kinds of sensitive company information, including high-level credentials.
Office 365 is the most popular cloud service in the world, which makes it a popular target for hackers looking to break into the data-rich environment for all types of malicious activity.
If you have a firewall and other network security features protecting your on-premises IT infrastructure, that keeps the data on your computers and servers protected, but what about your cloud data?
For protecting your Office 365 accounts, there’s a unique tool from SherWeb called Office Protect.
Office Protect gives you visibility into all threats to your Office 365 service and makes it easy to enable security settings and monitor your account for any suspicious activity.
How Office Protect Safeguards Office 365
When you use Office Protect to safeguard your Office 365 service, you have multiple tools that will alert you should anyone try to breach your network. You’ll also gain a much better understanding of security best practices for your accounts through a comprehensive dashboard.
Office Protect not only protects you against threats from the outside, it can also protect you from inside threats, including just simple human error. Nearly half of all IT incidents that occur in small and medium businesses are the result of a human making a mistake.
Here are several of the ways that Office Protect can make your Office 365 account much less vulnerable to a data beach or email hijacking.
Alerts at the First Sign of Trouble
The Office Protect program monitors your Office 365 service 24/7 and will immediately alert you by email to any signs of trouble that you may not have known about for months otherwise.
For example, one of the popular activities that hackers undertake on breached Office 365 accounts is to send out a ton of spam and phishing emails. They send them out using your company domain name and resources, which can lead to your domain being blacklisted by multiple mail services and a long cleanup process to restore your ability to email normally again.
One of the alerts you’ll receive is in the event of any suspicious mailbox activities (like tons of spam being sent out). Other alerts include:
- Any changes made to your security policy
- Sign-ins from unknown IP addresses or unusual locations
- Administrator abuse
Threat Protection via Security Settings
There are multiple security settings in Office 365 and Office Protect can help you deploy the most important ones for the best level of security.
Recommended settings include things like enabling multi-factor authentication for all users, setting outbound spam notifications, and putting audit and mailbox audit logs to “always on.”
Gain Better Visibility from Automated Reporting
Office Protect provides you with automated reporting that gives you visibility into user activity in a variety of areas through comprehensive activity dashboards. Export to either PDF or CSV to gain full control of how you view and use your activity data.
Choose Between Digest and Alert or Both
There are some activities you may want an immediate email alert for, such as a user account being deleted, while others like an Administrator Role change, you might not need to know immediately and instead can see it in a recap of the day, i.e. a digest.
The Office Protect interface let you choose how you’re notified of a variety of security events. You can choose alert, digest or both.
Choose Your Security Posture in a Click
Office 365 has so many different security options that it can be confusing going through them all one by one and trying to figure out if you’re following “best practices” for IT security or not.
Office Protect comes with three preset templates that can be applied to your Office 365 at the click of a button:
- Low User Impact
- Recommended Best Practices
- Max Security
This allows you to easily ensure your settings are properly protecting your Office 365 service. There is also flexibility to change any individual settings as well to match your balance between user impact and security.
Proactive Protection to Prevent Breaches
Rather than hoping your Office 365 credentials don’t get stolen and your account breached, with Office Protect you can be proactive about your security. Constant monitoring and continuous updates give you peace of mind that your cloud data is being actively safeguarded and you’re not just a sitting duck for hackers.
How Secure Are Your Office 365 Accounts?
Just one click on a phishing email or a single weak password can cause your Office 365 accounts to be breached by a hacker. Let Connect2Geek help secure your accounts and give you better visibility into what’s happening within your Office 365.
Schedule a free consultation and demo of Office Protect today! Call 208-468-4323 or reach out online.