by Phil Crayford

A primary concern for organisations as they begin planning for their move to Office 365 is security and compliance.

Companies today face significant challenges in staying compliant. Data is spread across a variety of different products – such as Exchange, Sharepoint, Teams – and the data may include personally identifiable information (PII). Regulations lead to increased data management costs and stress levels for organisations!

These concerns are reflected in the predicted organisational spend on information security. Gartner predicts that end-user spending for the information security market is estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8.5% from 2017 through 2022 to reach $170 billion in constant currency.

Microsoft 365's compliance and security features 

The compliance and security features in Microsoft 365 are extensive, including:

  • Importing of data into Office 365
  • Classification of data using sensitive information types, sensitivity labels, and trainable classifiers
  • Automatic classification of data and entity extraction using the power of AI through Sharepoint Syntex
  • Content search and export, data holds via eDiscovery Investigations
  • Secure authentication via multi-factor, conditional access and risk-based sign-in controls
  • Data encryption at rest, in transit, extending to data that leaves the organisation
  • Data loss prevention
  • Threat detection and the response to phishing, spoofing, insider risks, shadow IT, data exfiltration and many more
  • Communication compliance
  • Advanced auditing and policies for proactive and reactive responses
  • Many, many more features

But are you keeping on top of all these features?

Office 365, including Security and Compliance, is not something that needs a static one-off deployment and configuration but is an evergreen framework with over 1,400 changes per year. The rate and number of Office 365 changes, along with the challenges and opportunities they bring, can be difficult for organisations to keep up with.

Need help with security and compliance?

Research by Spanning and CollabTalk found that a leading cause of concern for organisations was “lack of security training for all employees” (15.61%).

When asked how Microsoft could enhance the security of their products, 83% of respondents requested more assistance in understanding and implementing Compliance and Security in Microsoft 365 products.

This is where we can help with our QA-authored five-day Mastering GDPR, Governance, Security & Compliance in Office 365 course, including hands-on labs that are updated frequently with not only the latest Office 365 Security and Compliance features but also previews of features in development to futureproof your knowledge.

The course will help you to implement governance security in Office 365, covering all products and features to give your organisation the ability to discover personal data, govern and protect it responsibly, and report any breaches.

Please note: There is a specific reference to GDPR, but this is not a GDPR course – this course is about implementing security governance and compliance features within Office 365 irrespective of the compliance framework, and is appropriate to anyone interested in any aspect of Office 365 Governance Security and Compliance. 

If you're interested, book online or get in touch and our sales team will be happy to assist you.

Office 365: Mastering GDPR, Governance, Security & Compliance

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