3 Overlooked Microsoft Tools That Can Better Secure Emails

Experts estimate that 2.4 million emails were sent every second last year. Take that figure and stretch it across an eight-hour workday and that comes to roughly 69 billion emails between the Missed Target Showing Failure Loss And Unsuccessful Aimhours of 9-5 each day. That is a lot of email. Each one of those 69 billion messages isn’t just an opportunity for workers to connect, it’s also a sizable risk for employers.

As employees are going through the day, sending off their share of those 69 billion messages, they’re not always the most careful. Sometimes this inattentiveness can manifest itself in something that, while not inherently dangerous, is extremely annoying. Example: Time, Inc.’s so-called “reply-all-pocalypse” from earlier this year. Other times, a mistake can result in extremely sensitive data being accessed by the absolute wrong parties.

So what can be done to prevent this? Staffers can be urged to follow the same old email best practices, such as double and triple checking everything. However, that does little to prevent email recipients from behaving incorrectly. A better, more comprehensive approach is to bolt a technological solution onto those best practices with the help of Microsoft tools you may already have in your IT environment.

Are you missing out on these Microsoft cybersecurity features?

If your business utilizes Office 365 E3 then you already have access to the following features which can better secure your business email. All you need is for someone to activate them and configure them to suit your needs.

  • Information Rights Management (IRM) – Finally gain some control over what happens to interoffice email after you click “Send” with IRM. This feature lets the sender of an email set permissions as to what a recipient can and can’t do with a message. This includes:
    • Setting permissions concerning whether users can forward an email, reply all to it, copy and paste text from it, or take a screen grab of it
    • Extending restrictions beyond the email itself to any attachments which have their origins in Microsoft Office
    • Designating an expiration date so an email (and its attachments) will be unavailable once a specified period of time has elapsed
  • Office 365 Message Encryption (OME) – Build an additional layer of security around your business’ emails with OME. Once activated, OME will automatically encrypt emails based on organizational policies to ensure the content is only accessible by those you intended.
    • In order to access these encrypted emails, recipients will need to log in using their Microsoft account or a onetime passcode
    • When a recipient opens a restricted message, he or she will be greeted with a portal requiring them to log-in to view the content. This portal can be personalized to reflect your business’ unique branding
    • Encryption rules will apply to either internal or external recipients, protecting your data wherever it travels
  • Data Loss Prevention (DLP) – Regulate the kinds of information users can include in their internal or external emails with DLP. This feature scans messages for the sensitive info IT tells it to look for and automatically applies policies and restrictions to that data based on organizational settings.
    • Utilize DLP templates to red flag anything from SSNs and credit card information to data protected under HIPAA
    • Determine the sensitivity of triggers, for example, you may be OK with financial information being emailed internally, but not externally
    • Set hands-free actions that will be launched when sensitive data is located – such as email the attempted sender or pass word along to your organization’s compliance manager

Better secure your business communications

These features and others may already be available to you, it could just be a case of turning them on and optimizing them to meet your needs. Arraya’s award-winning Microsoft team can do that and more. What do we mean by more? October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month and in honor of that, our Microsoft team has been hard at work on a series of blogs detailing how they can help today’s businesses achieve their cybersecurity goals. Topics so far include how the cloud has revolutionized security and how to get a better read on your business’ cloud apps.

Office 365 E3’s list of cybersecurity capabilities is impressive, but Office 365 E5 contains even more. Stay tuned to this space for an upcoming post detailing them more fully. In the meantime, message our Microsoft team at mssales@arrayasolutions.com to start a conversation about cybersecurity today.

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Arraya Insights