At a first glance, going from traditional MS Office software to the MS Office 365 Suite can bring a lot of benefits to the users. A company using Microsoft Office 365 can practically save money from local maintenance and other infrastructure costs. But why do some companies still hesitate to upgrade their local Office Suite to cloud-based email systems?
A survey about how companies and individuals see Office 365 as something of a value in the industry was conducted. The Office 365 State of the Industry Survey involved 160 participants which lead to finding Security and Feature Enhancements as the two prime factors to consider when moving to Office 365.
For the part where the companies are asked what made them falter to upgrade to cloud-based emails, security became the main reason. Microsoft’s Office 365 has done its part to develop itself over the years but its structure still somehow cannot accommodate the demands of its users. If somebody’s planning to move to Office 365, a more thorough review and analysis would be required.
One of the ways that you can do to put more security to Office 365 is to incorporate security controls from Microsoft and third parties. This way, you can have a multiple-level barrier against attackers.
Protecting accounts from unauthorized access
Any cloud-based services, like Microsoft Office 365, can create a security system that will require passwords and digital authentication methods. But that still does not have full control on “who” must only know the passwords. Users can simply take note of the passwords on any paper or mobile device. If not physically written down, they may also give it verbally to other persons that are not authorized on the account.
There are other forms of authentication that you can use for additional security. Tokens are now available that serve as “keys” for you to access a network.
This gives additional security by providing a two-form factor authentication wherein the user not only needs to provide password but also a number-generated code specified for the user of the token.
To see how free VPNs may help, you can try one for your organization. One of the largest VPN service providers, PureVPN, boasts a wide scope of locations and servers. They also claim to be the “World’s Fastest VPN Service”.
Preventing the spread of the virus
Making sure that the correct persons are the ones get into your network is just one part of the story. Once they have access, it is also important to make sure that the emails that they are sending and receiving are free from viruses, malware, spyware, and other types of cyber threats.
Microsoft has put protection in Office 365 that you can easily utilize. This is only a free and basic version so you are still not fully protected from more elaborate cyber-attacks. If you want to get more protection, you can purchase their Advanced Email Threat Protection.
Third party protection like Proofpoint and LogicNow can add more protection by scanning the emails first before sending it to the Office 365 system. It is also important to not only protect your network from viruses but also from spyware and malware. Look for services that have quarantine, blocking, and sandboxing features.
Avoiding outages
Outages have always been problems for enterprise IT customers. Apart from providing good security, cloud-based solutions must also have something to address system downtime problems. Customers are always running their operations and are highly dependent on the system so any minute outage can really affect their business.
Cloud-based services can always make use of the third-party clients to assist in keeping everything running. These groups will only serve as “go-to” systems where you can retrieve emails and other information.
If everything else fails, you can always trace the email thread and look for the persons CC’d to get the email you are looking for.
Other online solutions
One way of effectively getting the best protection and service for your cloud services is to get security services from a single cloud-based reseller. These resellers normally offer extra services of protections that are bundled with Office 365.
No matter how attractive the offers are, it is still critical to know the details. Some of the sellers exaggerate the features and bonuses that their products have but in reality, those are really not of use for you.
In conclusion the demand for cloud-based systems and VPNs are continuously rising. Along with this rise is also the need for more protection and convenience to the users. It is vital to have both qualities since you are now dealing with sensitive company information.
Security loopholes are common to any developing systems but you can always be more vigilant to avoid any further damage to your system.