Microsoft Office 365 email security features exist to enhance your safety while sending and receiving emails. Office 365 is an essential tool for business collaboration and productivity. Microsoft understands the need to protect its clients from external and internal threats, so the company introduces security features to complement its email service.
With that said, companies can further enhance their Office 365 email security by implementing top-level practices. Despite being an effective measure to counteract advanced threats and targeted attacks, Microsoft Office clearly states that data security and safety are your responsibility.
That’s why we’ll tell you how to enhance Microsoft Office 365 email security by giving you a list of the security practices that protect sensitive data and stop advanced malware through email.
Let’s start.
Tips to Enhance Office 365 Email Security
Email security should be a top priority for any business that handles sensitive data. Unfortunately, as many know, most companies get compromised through email. That makes it easy to fall victim to data breaches since all it takes is to click on a malicious link or download a malicious attachment.
That’s precisely why you need to protect your email at all costs. Here are a few professional tips that will help you do that.
Choose a Stronger Password
You should make a company-wide policy for employees to use stronger passwords for their email accounts. A weak password is easy to breach, and many people get in the habit of reusing passwords.
Both practices compromise you in more than one way. If you reuse passwords, you put yourself at risk if a hacker manages to get ahold of your credentials. From there, it’s easy for them to breach your other accounts.
So the first professional tip to enhance Office email protection is to change your password. Instead of the usual password you use, come up with a different one consisting of letters, numbers, and characters. You can use a password generator to generate a robust and unbreachable password. Then, use a password manager tool to save the password.
Use a Two-Factor Authenticator
Another way to protect your Office 365 email is to use two-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication is a security practice that prevents malicious actors from breaching your email account.
Two-factor authentication works by generating a code on your smartphone that changes every 30 to 60 seconds. Whenever you log in to your Office email, you will need to type in the code. So if a hacker manages to get ahold of your log-in credentials, they will need the authentication code from your smartphone.
As you can imagine, that’s not something easy to do. It takes extreme negligence to compromise your Office email and smartphone. But unfortunately, even extreme negligence is not out of the ordinary.
The way hackers compromise accounts and devices is through malicious links. Once you click the link through your smartphone, you’re done. The link could contain malware, keylogger, spyware, or any other virus. Phishing attacks are specially designed social engineering hacks that trick you into revealing sensitive information or clicking and downloading malicious software to infect your system. Phishing attacks are so common that this report states that 25% of all data breaches involve phishing attacks.
That’s why you need to take online protection seriously. Don’t download attachments or links from suspicious emails; use a two-factor authenticator to protect your Office 365 email.
Use Email Encryption
Email encryption is a top security practice that protects both sender and receiver. The way email encryption works is by encrypting emails, making them unreadable. More interestingly, encryption is an available feature with Office 365.
You can give the receiver a decryption key whenever you want to send an encrypted email. The only way to reveal the contents of the email is through this key. You will need to configure a few things in Outlook to enable email encryption.
But you need to know that email encryption is an advanced threat protection practice that stops advanced threats from ransomware attacks to business email compromise attacks.
With email encryption, you protect sensitive information from all Office applications. For example, let’s say you need to send sensitive information for Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint Online, or any other Office application. You encrypt the email contents through email encryption, making it impossible for hackers to access the information.
Encryption is an email security solution that Microsoft offers with its Office 365 license. So take advantage of it whenever sending sensitive information through email.
Conclusion
For businesses that rely heavily on email as a communication tool, ensuring the security of their messages is of utmost importance. While there are plenty of ways to protect your business email, you can take it a step further and implement professional practices that enhance Microsoft’s basic security features.
So instead of waiting to fall victim to spear phishing attacks, account compromise attacks, or any other form of advanced email threats, enhance your Office 365 email security with these professional security practices.
