Microsoft Business Premium has emerged as the leading productivity suite for businesses of all sizes, from SMB’s up to enterprise level. It helps simplify operations, streamline communications and empower your staff to achieve more.
What we really love about Business Premium is the advanced cybersecurity tools it employs to help keep your business safe. Business managers get a good dose of peace-of-mind to go along with those productivity gains. That’s a win-win situation in anybody’s book!
Let’s take a look at the robust security features that come with Microsoft Business Premium. These are rock-solid components that help make this tier of Microsoft 365 very appealing to businesses wanting to improve their cybersecurity posture.
Microsoft Defender for Business
Defender comes in at the top of the list because of the comprehensive endpoint protection it provides. It makes enterprise-grade security easily available to SMB’s, empowering them against malware, phishing attacks and ransomware. The Advanced Threat Protection it offers comes with real-time threat detection and automated response capabilities. This means threats are mitigated early, before they snowball into bigger issues. AI and machine learning analyse emails and attachments for potential threats, and Defender is constantly updated to protect against the latest threats. What’s more, it seamlessly integrates across Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android devices.
Multi-Factor Authentication
A password alone simply doesn’t cut it these days – it’s too easy for hackers to break through that barrier. That’s why it needs to be fortified by an extra level of security – Multi-Factor Authentication is that extra level. When accessing an app or program, MFA requires multiple confirmation methods are satisfied to gain access. The first would be a password, then the second and even third could be something like a mobile app, a fingerprint or an emailed access code. Business Premium offers advanced MFA proven to put a stop to 99% of identity attacks, while ensuring only authorised people can access business systems and data.
Data Loss Prevention
We all know how important data is to businesses, particularly as data-dependant AI becomes more prevalent and important. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) in Business Premium gives you control over your data and prevents sensitive and confidential information from leaving your business, whether maliciously or unintentionally. DLP technology scans Outlook, SharePoint and Teams, identifying sensitive data and preventing it from being sent out of the organisation. DLP is included in Business Premium, but setup can require professional advice, which Smile IT can provide.
Message Encryption
Business Premium incudes the ability to encrypt emails being sent from Outlook, protecting the privacy of the information in the email. What this means is when you encrypt an email, it’ll only be accessible by the intended recipients – they’ll receive a private key that matches the public key used to encrypt the message, and by matching the two they will be able to decipher the message for reading. This feature can be applied to both internal and external emails, providing the ultimate peace of mind when sending highly sensitive messages.
Exchange Online Archiving
This is a cloud-based archiving and data recovery solution that helps organisations manage large volumes of email data. It provides an in-place archive for each user, helping reduce the clutter in their inbox, while ensuring their emails are stored properly and easily retrievable. It also assists organizations with archiving, compliance, regulatory, and Microsoft Purview eDiscovery challenges. This makes it easier to search and recover email data for compliance and legal purposes.
Conditional Access Policies
Conditional Access is a powerful security feature in Microsoft Business Premium. It’s particularly important when you have employees accessing company resources from different locations and devices. What it does is ensure only authorised users can access resources, under specific conditions – you can configure access so that staff can only log in if a set of specified criteria has been met. Conditional factors can include user location, device compliance, and user role, giving control over who can access what, from where and under what conditions.
Mobile Device Management
The importance of having secure endpoints has grown as the prevalence of remote work and the use of mobile devices has increased. With MDM, or Mobile Device Management, you can create and manage personal device policies to help protect your company data. You’ll be able to enforce security policies, remotely wipe devices in case of loss or theft, and ensure only compliant devices can access corporate resources.
Automatic Updates
Hackers and cyber bad actors are working at a frantic pace to try and get ahead of the software you use and figure out how to breach it. Software providers in turn have to stay ahead of them, something Microsoft takes very seriously! As with all their applications, Business Premium enjoys frequent updates of security patches and fresh features, closing down the vulnerabilities that cybercriminals seek to exploit.
Upgrade to Business Premium with Smile IT
Those are some pretty compelling security features you’ll find in Microsoft Business Premium. Leveraging them will help your business protect your data while also maintaining compliance with any industry rules and regulations. Not to mention the productivity benefits you enjoy when you start using this impressive suite of tools!
If you’re thinking about migrating or upgrading to Business Premium, our team can provide tailored guidance to help you navigate your way through this ecosystem. Get in touch here or give us a ring on 1300 766 720 – we’ll be able to answer any questions you might have!
When he’s not writing tech articles or turning IT startups into established and consistent managed service providers, Peter Drummond can be found kitesurfing on the Gold Coast or hanging out with his family!