Data security is vital to the success of your business. It is your responsibility to ensure that your data is secured in a manner compliant with data security laws.
Consumers also expect their data to be protected as they use your service or product, so you should take some time to familiarize yourself with your subscription service’s data security policies and features.
Fortunately, Office 365 and other subscription services offer security features that you should use to protect your company’s sensitive data. Here are a few security tips to help you use Office 365 and other subscription services safely.
Use multi-factor authentication
Many subscription services provide multi-factor authentication as part of their services to secure your account and company data. Multi-factor authentication combines a strong password with a secondary method of identity authentication.
As such, should your password be compromised, your account would still be secure. The second layer of identity authentication that some subscription services offer could be a phone call, text message, or app notification. Some services use advanced security questions that you set up when you initially set up your account or emails.
Set up security alerts
Security alerts can be used to identify suspicious account activity and to inform the system administrator of possible security breaches. Some Office 365 subscriptions allow you to set up alerts that would flag events such as multiple failed sign-in attempts, sign-ins from unusual IP addresses, and large data downloads.
However, some subscription services require that you purchase an add-on to your software that would provide these security alert features.
Create Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies
To protect and manage your data, it is essential that you set up DLP policies that are implemented across your entire company. Most employees won’t maliciously share or expose sensitive company information, but sometimes, in an attempt to do their job more efficiently, they will experiment with software and applications that may not be as secure as they believe.
Effective DLP policies provide employees with approved apps that they can use to be more efficient and restrict or ban access to apps or sites that are not approved.
Enable safety tips for email
Office 365 offers email safety tips as a feature that alerts users of potentially hazardous emails. Unfortunately, scam and hazardous emails have become more and more sophisticated, which can make it difficult to discern which emails are legitimate and which are not.
Viruses attached to emails that look innocent can compromise your company’s data security. Email safety tips flag suspicious emails and spam messages for your convenience and security.
To make certain that your sensitive company information is safe, you should look into the security features that your service provider offers. Many service providers offer multi-factor authentication, security alerts, and email safety tips, but others do not.
Similarly, not all subscription service providers that manage data in the cloud keep up-to-date security protocols. Be sure your provider can keep your data safe from data to loss or malicious use.