2 Zero-Cost Steps to Help Secure Your O365 Environment

New data from Microsoft shows the pandemic is accelerating the digital transformation of Cybersecurity. Organizations are feeling pressured to increase security while at the same time reducing security costs.

Here at SiFr, we have been a huge proponent of Microsoft's suite of security products since the get-go. Not simply because we're Microsoft certified partners, but mainly because our enterprise clients have trusted Microsoft as a technology partner for decades, before Cloud was ever a thing.

Microsoft 365 remains one of the most widely used productivity suites on the market, so it's no surprise that cybercriminals target Microsoft 365 environments. The pandemic also ramped up COVID-19 related scare-tactic phishing attempts in order to compromise user credentials.

If businesses were primarily on-premises before the pandemic, the sudden shift to remote working meant that many organizations were not prepared to deal with new-found security shortfalls. A traditional IT environment benefitted from tightly managed devices and the physical security of an office building; a loosely managed disbursed work force became a huge security concern.

Since the pandemic began, businesses have indicated that 20% of their security spending is on multifactor authentication implementations. View this infographic to learn how to secure your Office 365 (Microsoft 365) environment with 2 zero-cost steps.

You can accomplish both steps on the free tier of Azure AD by enabling Security Defaults. To do this, head over to Azure Active Directory Admin Center. At the bottom of the properties pane, click on the link that says "Manage Security defaults"

On the Enable Security defaults blade that opens, slide the "Enable Security defaults" slider to the "Yes" position and click on "Save" at the bottom.

If you receive a warning that says you have Conditional Access enabled and you cannot enable security defaults, that's OK. It means you have a more stringent access control mechanism in place already!

Multi-Factor Authentication can be enabled in many places via different policies, such as Conditional Access. Different licensing tiers will give you different functionalities. Conditional Access is Microsoft's recommended way of deploying MFA since it allows the administrator to have more granular control. While Conditional Access functionality through a paid licensing tier certainly is our recommendation too, it's nice to know that you can help secure your environment even with the free version of Azure AD.

To learn more about our security offerings, bookmark our Blog or follow us @SiFrConsulting for the latest news and updates on Cybersecurity.

If you need any help with your security implementations, deciding on licensing, etc. let's chat.