Getting the Most from Your Microsoft 365 E5 Security Licence

The Hostile, Complex Cyber Security Landscape

The past year has seen an unprecedented shift towards agile working practices. Microsoft technology has enabled organisations to empower their users wherever they work, ensuring seamless communication, collaboration and productivity in what has been a challenging operating landscape.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t just been organisations that have mobilised over the past 12 months. Cybercriminals have never been more active, and the collective shift to remote working has increased organisations’ attack surfaces. Security vulnerabilities that have existed for years have been spotlighted through increased activity and the commercialisation of phishing, ransomware and business email compromise (BEC) attacks, and this has resulted in a number of high-profile compromises that have caused unprecedented financial, operational and reputational damage, in some cases making front-page news.

Senior level conversations have been elevated to include cyber security strategy, with a keen focus on protecting critical national infrastructure and citizen information to successfully manoeuvre in today’s hostile digital landscape. However, with budgets stretched and up-to-the-minute understanding of today’s evolving cyber landscape at a premium, many organisations are unsure of how to take the first step in strengthening their cyber security postures.

This is where Microsoft 365 E5 security, when deployed and managed by a secure cloud expert like Six Degrees, really comes into its own. Microsoft 365 E5 security combines depth of capability with breadth of capability, enabling organisations to replace disparate cyber security systems delivered by multiple vendors with a single, consolidated security stack.

In this way, organisations can better protect themselves in today’s hostile digital landscape. Now let’s take a look at some of the key security capabilities of Microsoft 365 E5.

Microsoft 365 E5 Security Capabilities

So, what are the key security capabilities available with Microsoft 365 E5 licensing? Let’s take a look:

• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a holistic, cloud delivered endpoint security solution that includes risk-based vulnerability management and assessment, attack surface reduction, behavioural based and cloud-powered next generation protection, endpoint detection and response (EDR), automatic investigation and remediation, managed hunting services, rich APIs, and unified security management.
• Microsoft Defender for Identity. Microsoft Defender for Identity is a cloud-based solution that helps protect your organisation’s identities from multiple types of advanced targeted cyber-attacks.
• Microsoft Cloud App Security. Microsoft Cloud App Security enables you to view apps used in your organisation, identify and combat cyber threats, and monitor and control data travel in real time. Microsoft Cloud App Security is powered by native integrations with industry-leading security and identity solutions including Azure Active Directory, Intune, and Azure Information Protection, as well as any other solutions you want to leverage.
• Microsoft Defender for Officer 365. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 safeguards your organisation against malicious threats posed by email messages, links (URLs), and collaboration tools. Defender for Office 365 includes:
  • Threat protection policies. Define threat protection policies to set the appropriate level of protection for your organisation.
  • Reports. View real-time reports to monitor Defender for Office 365 performance in your organisation.
  • Threat investigation and response capabilities. Use leading-edge tools to investigate, understand, simulate, and prevent threats.
  • Automated investigation and response capabilities. Save time and effort investigating and mitigating threats.
• Azure Active Directory Premium. Azure Active Directory Identity Protection is a feature of the Azure Active Directory Premium P2 plan that lets you detect potential vulnerabilities affecting your organisation’s identities, configure automated responses to detected suspicious actions that are related to your organisation’s identities, and investigate suspicious incidents and take appropriate action to resolve them.
• Azure Information Protection. Azure Information Protection enables you to control and help secure email, documents and sensitive data that you share outside your company. From easy classification to embedded labels and permissions, enhance data protection at all times with Azure Information Protection – regardless of where it’s stored or who it’s shared with.

By working with Six Degrees, an Azure Expert MSP and member of the invite-only Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA), your organisation can leverage these advanced security features to protect itself from cyber-attack and data breach.

How Six Degrees Will Enhance Your Cyber Security Posture

The shift from a ‘set and forget’ mentality to an integrated, optimised and managed security stack can be tough to navigate for many of the organisations we work with at Six Degrees. Our team has developed a Six Degrees deployment methodology combining Microsoft best practices with industry best practices set by the likes of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. Our decision to use Microsoft security tools ensures customers receive industry-leading technology, while truly understanding and buying into the integrated nature of the technology we deploy and manage.

The benefits all of our customers realise by working with us to design, deploy, configure and manage Microsoft-led integrated security solutions are compelling. We enable customers to:

• Achieve an integrated security technology posture that is aligned to the cyber threats they face in today’s hostile digital landscape.
• Streamline and strengthen their technology stacks, gaining more benefits from a smaller, more manageable set of tools.
• Achieve commercial benefits by leveraging our Azure Expert MSP status to access funding and reinvest savings across the Microsoft technology stack.
• Reduce resource burden and focus on their business objectives by handing off the monitoring and management of their technology estates to a trusted secure cloud expert.
• Carry out proactive threat hunting that is essential to identifying and isolating cyber-threats before they become service-affecting.

Interested in learning more about how Six Degrees can enhance your organisation’s cyber security posture by leveraging the security capabilities available through Microsoft 365? Register here for a free consultation.