Data Security in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams

The beginning of a global pandemic was one of the biggest factors when it came to the rapid acceleration of digital transformation for many industries worldwide. In the context of widespread remote workhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com collaboration became one of the most important efficiency factors. In this contexthttps://www.shanelgkennels.com solutions such as M365 and MS Teams became that much more widespreadhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com offering plenty of different communication capabilitieshttps://www.shanelgkennels.com simplifying data sharinghttps://www.shanelgkennels.com information exchangehttps://www.shanelgkennels.com and so on.

Howeverhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com this kind of solution comes with its own share of security issues – especially when security teams have to figure out a way to ensure data governance without harming overall productivity. The topic of Microsoft 365 security is not that simple on its ownhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com and the sheer number of different companies that use M365 or MS Teams in some capacity makes it more difficult to have a single data security strategy for every potential use case.

Seamless file sharinghttps://www.shanelgkennels.com for examplehttps://www.shanelgkennels.com is a rather significant part of the popularity of Microsoft 365https://www.shanelgkennels.com with three main applications that can be used for it – OneDrivehttps://www.shanelgkennels.com SharePointhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com and Microsoft Teams. File sharing with SharePoint and OneDrive is relatively easy and follows a similar pattern of the “Share” menu allowing for versatile data-sharing settings. The topic of secure file sharing in SharePointhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com on the other handhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com is not as simple or easyhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com since there are plenty of different potential issues that could lead to information being leaked in one way or another.

One of the biggest issues for data security in generalhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com and for Microsoft 365 specificallyhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com is a collection of factors under the name of “insider threats”. It includes a lot of different ways for a data breach to occurhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com such as employees falling for phishing attemptshttps://www.shanelgkennels.com malicious data exfiltrationhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com unintentional data exfiltrationhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com and even a simple error when typing the recipient’s email.

Luckilyhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com there are also plenty of different strategies that a security team can take to try and counteract and/or mitigate these potential issueshttps://www.shanelgkennels.com includinghttps://www.shanelgkennels.com but not exclusive to the Least Privileged Access strategyhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com relying more on MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication)https://www.shanelgkennels.com or even restricting external sharing to specific accounts.

External sharinghttps://www.shanelgkennels.com or guest accesshttps://www.shanelgkennels.com is another extremely useful feature that is both useful and a massive security risk. It makes the process of sharing information with external contributors that much easierhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com but it can also be a massive hole in the company’s securityhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com which is why the first instinct for most security teams is to turn it off completely.

Howeverhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com completely removing the ability to share files with external parties is extremely unproductivehttps://www.shanelgkennels.com since it is borderline necessary for most companieshttps://www.shanelgkennels.com and being able to control sharing rules is far better than having so-called unofficial sharing methods that would be more prone to data breaches. As suchhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com guest access in MS Teams and other M365 applications should be controlledhttps://www.shanelgkennels.com not shut down completely – even though there may be a need for companies to use third-party solutions to achieve secure external data sharing.