Category Office365

Office365 Security

Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection

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Almost every email user is a target of malware emails. They often appear as fake documents, links (URLs), etc. To prevent unpleasant situations, we suggest the implementation of Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection, which provides an additional layer of protection to organizations against malicious attacks.

What can malware do to your computer?

  1. Email malware can steal your sensitive data, including passwords.
  2. Ransomware can delete or encrypt your files.
  3. Suspicious email attachments could include code that can download more malware onto your computer.
  4. It can enable a third party to intercept and infiltrate into your correspondence.

What is Advanced Threat Protection?

Advanced Threat Protection is a cloud-based email protection service that keeps your data safe against malware and viruses. It consists of ATP Safe Attachments, ATP Safe Links, anti-phishing policies, ATP for SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams, real-time reports, and threat trackers. The main task of the mentioned features is to safeguard an organization from harmful links that are part of a message or an Office document, and to safeguard email and documents in real-time.

In order to successfully detect malicious activities, all features use a variety of machine learning and analysis techniques.

ATP is included in the Office 365 Enterprise E5 plan; it is also possible to purchase it as an add-on to the following Office 365 plans:

  • Office 365 Business Essentials
  • Office 365 Business Premium
  • Office 365 Enterprise E1
  • Office 365 Enterprise E3
  • Office 365 Enterprise F1
  • Office 365 A1
  • Office 365 A3

Office365

Microsoft Teams – New Features

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At the Ignite conference, Microsoft announced a bunch of new features inside the Teams application. We picked a few interesting ones to highlight.

Private Channels

A private channel is the perfect feature for those who need to work on a specific project. A group of people that are part of a team can collaborate in a focused space without spamming others, and without having to create a completely separate Team. It’s designated with a lock icon; only members of private channels can see it and participate in conversations.

Multiwindow

This feature allows users to pop out chats, meetings, calls, and documents into separate windows. It will available from the beginning of 2020.

Pinned channels

Later this year, all Teams users will be able to pin important channels to the top of their team lists.

Pinned applications

Also, It will be possible to pin frequently used apps to the left main rail.

Whiteboard

The whiteboard app is now generally available in Teams meetings. It does not matter if your colleagues are in the same room or working remotely – you can brainstorm together on the same virtual canvas.

Safe links

Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection safeguards Teams messages from harmful links. When somebody shares a URL in a private chat or channel conversations, Teams will scan the web address and alert users if there is a threat.

Office365

Manage your employee schedule with Shifts

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A simple schedule management tool? That would be Shifts – an app that allows you to organize shifts for first-line workers, such as industrial workers, waiters, health workers and others that work primarily on a shift basis.

You can easily create their shift pattern and communicate with them via Shift, which is integrated into the Teams application.

The key features are:

  • Shift management
  • Communication among workers
  • Communication between workers and managers
  • Collaboration
  • Employee requests for shift swaps and vacation

Shifts availability

Shifts is available in all Office 365 subscriptions that include the Teams application, including Education and Non-profit plans.

Create a shift in just one click!

The Shifts app is listed in the additional Teams tab (“three dots”).

When you want to create a shift for a team member, you simply double click on an empty slot in the calendar and choose the working hours. The information is shared with your team.

Also, you can add additional activities to employee’s shifts, such as lunch, breaks, etc.

A few things to keep in mind

  1. If you are already a Teams user, you can turn the Shifts app on or off in the Teams admin center.
  2. Guest users are not supported.
  3. You can use it on all your devices: PC, Mac, tablet, smartphone.

Office365

Office 365 Dark Mode – Yes or No?

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Did you know that dark mode is now available for your Office 365 applications?

You can turn it on for Office apps like Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, SharePoint, Planner, Teams, To do, OneNote, etc. And, of course, it can be turned off anytime.

Advice: Use it where the default mode is not appropriate; for example, in dark environments.

Pros and cons?

Pros:

  • It saves energy, but only if your devices have an OLED screen.
  • It reduces eye strain in low light conditions.
  • The screen glare is minimized.

Cons:

  • White text on a black background is harder to read.
  • It can be challenging to read long texts in dark mode.
  • Dark themes are an inferior option for eye strain in bright light conditions.

Conclusion?

Come to the dark side. We have cookies!

So, dark mode – yes or no? It depends mostly on your personal preferences. We recommend that you use dark themes in low light conditions, and light themes during the daylight. Test to see which option suits you best.

Office365

Beware of Office 365 Phishing Attacks

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No matter how hard your organization tries to protect employees and its customers, it is possible for determined individuals to find a way to bypass built-in security protections and steal your account credentials.

Here are two examples:

  • you will get an email with a notification that you have late tasks in the Planner
  • you will receive an email containing a link to a SharePoint document which is similar to standard SharePoint invitation

If you click on the link, a fake portal.office.com login page will appear.

What to do if your Office 365 account was hacked?

  • contact your IT support immediately
  • reset your password
  • remove mailbox delegates
  • disable mail forwarding rules
  • remove the global mail forwarding property
  • enable Multi-Factor authentication
  • set a complex password
  • enable mailbox auditing
  • deliver Audit Logs to the admin to review

Follow these steps to prevent phishing attacks

  1. Educate your colleagues about the dangers and the warning signs of phishing attacks.
  2. Do not click on a suspicious link from unknown email addresses/senders.
  3. Do not input your Office 365 account credentials into suspicious forms, or when a connection to a website is not secure.
  4. Always try to use two-factor authentication.
  5. Purchase and enable Advanced Threat Protection.

Use Advanced Threat Protection from the Security & Compliance Center

Advanced Threat Protection has a set of machine learning models with detection algorithms that can mitigate a very high percentage of phishing attacks. It is available in the Office 365 E5 plan, but you can also purchase it as an add-on to your existing Plans.