Top 5 ways to secure your business using Microsoft 365 business plans

As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we work closely with our customers from on-boarding new tenants and licences to everyday adds and changes to help them gain the most out of their Microsoft services and subscriptions.

For this blog, I am concentrating on the network security and threat protection features that can be found within the Microsoft 365 suite of products.

Did you know that Microsoft’s subscription services can provide data threat protection and device management features to help you protect your business from online threats and unauthorised access? They can protect and manage company data that is accessed via phones, tablets and PCs and here’s how:

Table of contents:

• Multi factor authentication (MFA)
• Anti-malware protection
• Ransomware protection
• Stop auto-forwarding for emails
• Phishing protection

Five ways Microsoft can improve the network security of your business

1. Multi-factor authentication (MFA)

One of the quickest ways to guard against a data protection breach is by giving your passwords some attention. In a previous blog - Choosing the right passwords is not a laughing matter - I mentioned the top 100,000 most used passwords. With MFA, people need to use a code on their phone to sign into Microsoft 365 as well as their passwords. This extra step can prevent hackers from taking over if they steal your password.

For businesses using Microsoft 365, IT teams can add a setting that requires staff to log in using multi-factor authentication. When you make this change, users will be prompted to set up their phone for MFA next time they log in.

2. Anti-malware protection

Microsoft 365 already includes some data threat protection by blocking emails with attachments of certain file types. Microsoft Defender Antivirus also provides strong anti-virus and anti-malware software protection and is built into the Windows 10 and 11 operating systems.

Microsoft Business Premium users will also get additional device protection, including firewalling, and web content filtering. These capabilities are included in Microsoft Defender for Business package, which was rolled out last month.

3. Ransomware protection

Ransomware restricts access to data by encrypting files or locking computer screens. The cyber criminals behind these attacks attempt to extort money from victims by asking for ransom, usually in form of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, in exchange for access to data.

You get ransomware protection for email hosted in Microsoft 365 and for files that are stored in OneDrive or SharePoint Online. The Microsoft 365 versioning feature means you can recover earlier versions of files so you can work on these if cyber criminals are preventing access to the more current files.

4. Stop auto-forwarding for emails

When a hacker gains access to a user’s mailbox, they often automatically forward their emails to steal important email content, while the user is none the wiser. You can prevent this occurring by setting up a mail flow rule in the Office 365 Business Premium subscription.

5. Phishing protection

If you've configured one or more domains for your Microsoft 365 environment, you can configure targeted anti-phishing protection. swcomms can setup your Microsoft 365 email to protect you against malicious impersonation-based phishing attacks and other phishing attacks. This is done with the help of Microsoft 365 Defender and is again included within the package (albeit with some specialist configuration).

Want advice on your Microsoft services and subscriptions?

These 5 tips are aimed to help you and your business. Please do get in contact at liz.womack@swcomms.co.uk to arrange a consultation to ensure you are making the full use of your Microsoft 365 licensing.