Traditional Office software is designed to be used offline hence there is very little you can do to monitor its usage other than check what data is sent via email or to a printer or downloaded from/uploaded to a cloud site. Office 365, by contrast, is a cloud service and as such it’s designed to be used mainly online and hence can, should, and in some cases must be monitored. Here is what you need to know to choose an Office IT security service in Sacramento CA.
You need to ensure that your Office IT security service actually is in Sacramento CA
If you just do an internet search for “Office IT security service in Sacramento CA” then the chances are you’re going to pick up at least some results for Office IT security companies that offer services in Sacramento CA, but which are not actually located in Sacramento CA or even necessarily near Sacramento CA. In fact, they could be physically located on the other side of the world.
In principle, there may be nothing to stop you from working on a global basis. In practice, staying local can make a lot of sense. Not only does it give you the best chance of forming a good working relationship with your partner, but it also makes sure that everyone is on the same page legally and that, in the worst case, any disputes between you are resolved by your local courts.
You need to ensure that your Office IT security service can work in Office 365
Clouds come in two basic forms, private and public. The key difference between them is that a private cloud is for the exclusive use of one sole customer (known as a tenant), whereas a public cloud is shared between unrelated customers. All the practical differences between private and public clouds essentially spin off this basic fact.
In terms of security, it means that any company which offers security services for private clouds can implement them in any way it chooses. By contrast, any company which offers security services for public cloud services has to implement them in a way that basically sits on top of the cloud platform’s infrastructure. The good news is that the popularity of Office 365 has encouraged Office IT security services to develop solutions for this platform so there is a very decent range of choices.
You need to ensure that your Office IT security service can perform the services you need
In addition to confirming that your Office IT security service can operate on the Office 365 platform, you need to ensure that they can provide the specific security services you need. For example, you might just want to reinforce Microsoft’s threat detection and monitoring, but it is probably more likely that you’ll want them to focus more on how your employees use Office 365 and any security threats this could generate.
For example, you might want them to look at identity and access management. In addition to keeping an eye on who is using what (when and how), you might also want to have their guidance on what access you should be assigned to whom. In principle, you should only assign people the minimum level of access necessary to do their job, but in practice, there might be legitimate reasons why they’d want more and you’d then have to decide whether to give it to them or whether to make the data available in some other way (or not at all).
Email management is another big area for cloud security. You’re going to need to apply the same sort of security standards as you would to a stand-alone version of Outlook, but you’ll need to do it via the Office 365 cloud platform. In particular, you’re going to need to ensure that there is the same level of robust protection against malware attacks, including phishing and other social engineering exploits.
In simple terms, while you can and should train your staff to recognize these threats, especially since many of them are obvious if you take the time to look at them properly, it’s very dangerous to rely on your staff to identify malicious communications. The average worker is at least moderately busy most of the time and if an email looks at least reasonably legitimate at a quick glance, they will probably treat it as such, especially if it appears to come from someone they know.
If you’d like to speak to a reputable Office IT security service in Sacramento CA, please click here now to contact Aperio.IT.
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