How to Maintain Security When Employees Work Remotely

There are handful of priorities to look at when reviewing the security of your Office 365 tenant with remote users. With all of the sensitive information being stored and passed through Office 365 user accounts, it's important to know what to look at and implement in terms of security. While this seems daunting with all users being on different networks, devices, etc., there are a few easy things that you can take a look at:

1. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) - We have talked about this a lot recently and it's extremely important for remote work. This will be the first line of defense to ensure it's virtually impossible for bad actors to get into any one account by requiring to input a code, sent to the users device, to gain access to the account. This can be applied to all users, or only specific user based on the needs of the business
2. Threat Detection Systems - These are tools that can be put in place to bolster security for the tenant and accounts. This can include auto-monitoring of sign-on attempts like our custom tool Cloud Protect can do, or remote device management like Endpoint Manager in Office 365.
3. E-mail Spam Filter - Having the right spam filter in place can help block unwanted emails to the inbox as well as make users aware of potential threats in e-mails that are delivered to the inbox. Our tool, Cloud Protect, also has a built-in spam filter that can label e-mails as spam, read and identify certain language in e-mails that make it a threat, among many other functions that can help limit phishing and spam that may come through. This is extremely important for remote work as users will not have the resources/people on hand to review potential threats while working from home.
4. Zero Trust Philosophy - This is the thought process and assumption that there will be a breach, and it's not a matter of if, but when. You want to always assume that your authentication methods will get hacked. Zero Trust focuses on the fact that trust is established through context, meaning that the identity of the user/location, endpoint security and app/service requested is verified. You want to make sure that security policies are set up to prevent/detect a breach when it happens...Proactive vs. Reactive!