Security & Compliance sucks...not anymore

Deutsche Version: LINK

Finally, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) forces companies to think about which data is accessible and editable by whom. With the recent data protection scandals on major platforms such as Facebook etc. the protection of data is not only a very topical issue, but also a very topical business model.

Microsoft offers its customers functions and license models to monitor and secure access to their data and systems. In the end it is a complex story to find out which functions and which licenses are required to implement Security & Compliance requirements in your company. The whole story is further complicated by different license models and feature-sets focusing on Security & Compliance.

At the Ignite 2018 improvements around Security & Compliance were announced. Office 365 becomes Microsoft 365, Azure Information Protection becomes Microsoft Information Protection and so on. But what does this mean for customers, partners and especially the users?

Actually quite a lot. Microsoft services getting more and more aligned to the operational processes and users needs. In the future, management portals, for example, will be grouped and accessed according to their use:

• https://Admin.microsoft.com => Admin Center
• https://security.microsoft.com => Security Settings
• https://compliance.microsoft.com => Compliance

Data classification and encryption is an important requirement for storing sensitive content in SaaS solutions. Azure Information Protection Labels, Site Classifications and Office 365 Labels are now standardized in the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center and does no longer exist separately from each other. This makes the use of these techniques much more efficient.

These are just two examples on how Microsoft Cloud Services successively merge what belongs together.

Microsoft Information Protection or the Microsoft Intune feature for managing devices and apps are focusing explicit scenarios. However, security & compliance projects often do not start with these specific requirements. Starting an Office 365 project the requirement is more about providing basic protection level and setup. Based on this basic configuration further requirements are then successively defined and implemented in the company.

A new provisioned Office 365 Tenant is very open. Basically, every user can share all the data he has access to with anyone. Users can invite external partners to collaborate with them in a SharePoint site or in Teams and anyone can connect to Office 365 using any device by entering his username and password.

This liberal setup of Office 365 is very good for collaboration and communication in the company and with partners and customers. But it is risky in terms of Security & Compliance.

In Microsoft Internet Explorer we could configure the security of the browser with a simple slider. If there is the need to adjust special settings, this was also possible. Unfortunately, it is not quite that easy with Office 365 or Microsoft 365. A slider like we have in the Internet Explorer is unfortunately missing here.

But the whitepaper "A quick guide to secure Office 365" offers something similar. Based on a matrix with the levels Standard, Medium, High and Very High, it gives you an overview how Office 365 can be secured. The whitepaper also describes the effects on user-friendliness and the required licenses for setting up the various scenarios.

The whitepaper outlines a clear overview of the Microsoft technologies and functions for securing Office 365. Covered technologies are:

• Office 365 Secure Score
• Cloud App Security
• Intune & Office 365 MDM
• Azure AD Premium Features
• Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection
• Office 365 Threat Intelligence
• Security & Compliance Reports.

And another tip from me: If a user wants to save a file in his private DropBox folder, then he has a reason for it. Nobody does this accidentally or by mistake. If we don't know this reason and don't respect it, the whole Security & Compliance project will go wrong. Because of so many options that Shadow-IT offers to users today it is no longer possible to enforce security. The goal must is to understand which challenges and processes an employee faces in his daily work. A security and compliance setup must be based on this and acknowledges these factors.

Link to the white paper and my presentation at Ignite 2018 on this topic: LINK