Security Policies to Prohibit Data Loss in Microsoft 365

Microsoft recognizes the importance of business data and the financial consequences of losing it. That's why, Microsoft 365, they have launched a plethora of security and compliance solutions with Data Loss Prevention policies. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) prevents accidental data loss. DLP allows you to keep track of and control the movement of sensitive data files. DLP policies include one or more rules that define the circumstances and actions to be done when the rule is matched. When a DLP policy has multiple rules, a file that fits any of the rules in the DLP policy is considered to be a violation of the policy.

Notice Policy Alerts

Traditional data loss prevention (DLP) solutions were not built for today's cloud computing or the rising number of remote workers. As your company's digital transformation progresses, you'll face more complexity, increased administrative burden, and insufficient security of critical data - whether on your network, in the cloud, or the hands of distant users. Establishing Policy notification with Microsoft 365 Compliance Center will help you to secure your data from unpredictable cyber attacks. The Microsoft 365 compliance center dashboard will pop up alerting you of the presence of any unauthorized activity. Based on the number of occurrences or the amount of the stolen data, you may produce a single-event alert or an aggregated alert. They can also be set to alert on specific individual credentials; thus, it will allow you to reduce any data leak and also educate your employees about safe working systems.

Secure Personal Devices

In the situation of remote work, employees often use their unprotected personal devices for official work which grants them access to confidential data of your organization. Data from unknown personal devices can be compromised for various reasons like device theft, accidental sharing of documents, or any cyber attacks of malware or malevolent app. Therefore, including a proper security system becomes essential to avoid any official data loss. Any mobile device that accesses or saves business data should be set up for user identification and strong authentication, run updated anti-malware software, and connect to the company network via virtual private networking (VPN) links. You can also install the Mobile Device Management feature for Microsoft 365 which gives you the control to manage security policies by permitting or restricting access, it even allows you to remove sensitive data from your device remotely, if they are stolen or lost.

Use Multi-Factor Authentication

A proper identification system is important to protect your system and data from cyber-attacks. We are familiar with the password getaway, but is it enough to protect you from the latest, updated hackers? Thus, to minimize the risk of hijacking, we recommend you use multi-factor authentication. Multi-factor authentication is a digital security mechanism for protecting online accounts against data intrusions. Multi-factor authentication provides extra security levels by requiring users to submit unique codes in addition to their log-in credentials. It can be your phone number or email address where a security code will be sent to authenticate your identity. It uses three types of identity claims which need to be validated to gain access to the required site. If hackers ever decode your password, you will have the next two steps of security code and biometric authentication to fall back to.

Apply Session Timeouts

Session timeout is an important feature to safeguard your credentials on any online platform. It's used to consider how long a device can stay authenticated on a switch port before having to do so again. By default, sessions do not clock out, and once a device is permitted, it can stay there until it disconnects, the switch reboots or the device is given a Certificate of Authenticity (CoA). This feature safeguards the confidential data of your business from hacking. Employees often forget to log out of their Microsoft 365 accounts on unprotected computers or mobile devices, allowing unauthorized users unrestricted access to their sensitive data. But if you apply the Session Timeout feature to Microsoft 365, email accounts, internal networks, the system will automatically log out users after a certain time. This feature can also be used to close unused tabs with your other accounts.