Built-in security from Office 365

How safe is Office 365, and what is it? Office 365 is a cloud computing service which means you can work anywhere, anytime. It is also a security-hardened service, which has layers of security features to keep your documents safe.

There are five layers of security which all work together to keep your documents private. These are physical security, logical security, data security, user controls and admin controls.

Physical security

• 24-hour monitoring of datacentres.
• Multi-factor authentication, including biometric scanning for datacentre access.
• Internal datacentre network is segregated from the external network.
• Role separation renders location of specific customer data unintelligible to the personnel that have physical access.
• Faulty drives and hardware are demagnetized and destroyed.

Logical security

Lockbox processes for a strictly supervised escalation process greatly limit human access to your data. Learn how to activate Lockbox.
• Servers run only processes that are whitelisted, minimizing risk from malicious code.
• Dedicated threat management teams proactively anticipate, prevent, and mitigate malicious access.
• Port scanning, perimeter vulnerability scanning, and intrusion detection prevent or detect any malicious access.

Data security

• Encryption at rest protects your data on Microsoft’s servers.
• Encryption in transit with SSL/TLS protects your data when it’s transmitted between you and Microsoft.
Threat management, security monitoring, and file/data integrity prevent or detect any tampering of data.
Exchange Online Threat Protection provides advanced security and reliability against spam and malware to help protect your information and access to email.

User controls

Office 365 Message Encryption allows users to send encrypted email to anyone, whatever email service recipients may use.
• Data loss prevention can be combined with Rights Management and Office 365 Message Encryption to give greater controls to your admins to apply appropriate policies to protect sensitive data.
• S/MIME provides message security with certificate-based email access.
Azure Rights Management prevents file-level access without the right user credentials.

Admin controls

• Multi-factor authentication protects access to the service with a second factor such as phone.
• Data loss prevention prevents sensitive data from leaking either inside or outside the organization while providing user education and empowerment.
• Built-in mobile device management capabilities allow you to manage access to corporate data.
• Mobile application management within Office mobile apps powered by Intune provides granular controls to secure data contained in these apps.
• Built in antivirus and antispam protection along with advanced threat protection safeguard against external threats.

There is no question that Office 365 ticks all the security boxes. The product has physical security as well as being secure online to keep all of your work and details safe. Office 365 is our recommended product for these reasons as well as it being a hugely flexible product which has many practical aspects to it.

Microsoft is also the first major cloud provider to adopt the first international cloud privacy standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

If you would like to find out more about the security of Office 365, please call us today on 0800 471 4892 or email us at hello@clearcloudservices.co.uk.