Office 365 (Now Microsoft 365) is an amazing product used by more than one million companies worldwide to keep their organisations growing.
Fantastic from the point of view of efficiency. Problematic from the point of view of cyber security.
Why?
Because when products go large (let’s not use that tricky word ‘viral’ in this security context), criminals crack their knuckles and get to work.
In Office 365’s case, right now criminals are developing ever-sophisticated ways to force their way in and launch devastating attacks.
In fact, GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Council (NCSC) raised the alarm about several concerning UK incidents.
This means you need to take Office 365 security seriously. It’s essentially the door to your organisation’s data. You can either leave the door open and let people swan in. Or you can hold up a big flat palm and ask for robust security credentials.
If you’re thinking of doing the latter (and you really should) you’re undertaking Office 365 hardening.
What Is Office 365 Hardening?
Office 365 hardening is increasing the robustness of your Office 365 security to deter criminals. Fortunately, there are many features within the software itself that will help you do this. These range from enabling multi-factor authentication to monitoring systems to identify malicious insiders.
Before we move on to our hardening tips and a FREE Microsoft 365 Security Best Practice Guide, here’s a quick look at how criminals attack and what happens when they succeed.
How Do Attacks Occur?
According to GCHQ, two very specific types of Office 365 attacks are prevalent right now.
- Brute force attacks by password-guessing (often using an automated software) until access is granted.
- Spear phishing. This is one of our favourite subjects and we’ve posted about it here. Basically, a hacker poses as a legitimate person and requests victims to click on a spoof login page. This page allows the hacker to harvest a victim’s credentials.
What Can Happen If I am Attacked?
If you’re a regular reader of our blog, you probably know the drill by now. Once someone has your account details, they can impersonate you or just use your credentials to:
- move money out of your organisation
- steal confidential information to sell or use to damage your reputation
- launch spear phishing emails on others in your organisation or supply chain to wreak further damage.
Not good. On the threat scale of 1 – 10, breaching your Office 365 is coming in at around 11.
I’m Suitably Worried. So, What Do I Need to Do About This?
You’ll most likely want your in-house IT team or an external security provider to do the hardening. But it’s also important to know the general principles – and some of the methods – so you can talk about them with a level of confidence and ensure suitable action is taken.
Here’s 5 ways to help harden Office 365:
Know Your Secure Score
How good is your current security? Fortunately, Microsoft can give you a precise answer to that. Its Secure Score is based on 12 key tasks to help harden Office 365. We suggest you look at your Secure Score now, then see the difference after undertaking the tasks below.
Enable MFA Using Azure Active Directory
Multi-factor authentication is a beautiful thing because it requires users to identify themselves with more than a username and password. So even if these are compromised, you can foil the sinister people in dark hoodies. Your team can set up MFA using Azure Active Directory, which comes free with Office 365. Azure can also help in setting up strong passwords and other login-related security.
Detect Incursions Using Microsoft Defender for Identity
If Azure Active Directory is keeping bad guys out, your next line of defence should be rapidly picking up and blocking any that slip through the cracks and get in. Welcome to Microsoft Defender for Identity, a tool incorporated into Office 365. Using AI, it actively looks for threats and malicious insider actions within your systems. A classic example would be if a user logged in in two different locations in a short time frame. But this only scratches the surface of this amazing tool that will have your back in so many ways.
Protect and Encrypt Data Using Microsoft Information Protection
Robustly guarding sensitive data is another strong line of defence. Microsoft Information Protection will help you discover, classify and protect sensitive information. You can define who can access data and what they can do with it, and ensure it remains protected and encrypted even when transferred between devices. It will even help you follow best practice in terms of retaining and deleting files.
Extend Your Security to Third-party Apps Using Microsoft Cloud App Security
Imagine doing all the hard work of ensuring robust Office 365 security. Only for your employees to bypass all of that and spray your credentials all over the internet using third-party apps like Google Cloud, Dropbox etc. Two options.
1) Hold a poker-faced Teams meeting and read the proverbial riot act.
2) Use Microsoft Cloud App Security to discover third-party apps in use. It can then block access or increase security by mandating 2FA.
We highly recommend option two.
Talk to your team about these Microsoft Office 365 hardening features. If your external IT provider isn’t using them yet, have a serious talk – because they definitely should be.
And for an even more comprehensive plan, download our free guide below:
Intersys is a specialist cyber security provider and a Microsoft Modern Workplace Partner – in other words, perfectly placed to help businesses of all sizes ensure robust Microsoft 365 support and security. We do this work for clients every day and we’d be delighted to help you. For a no-obligations chat to see if we’re a good fit together, get in touch.