Microsoft expects well in excess of two thirds of their business customers to have moved to ‘the cloud’ by the end of this year. Microsoft 365 brings with it huge benefits for home working and productivity whilst on the move. Many businesses wouldn’t have been able to function over the period of the UK lockdown without it. However as a cloud service it attracts hackers who are constantly attempting to gain access to mailboxes. Once in, they will watch email message going back and forth, looking for an opportunity to email a trusted contact asking for a payment to be made to a different account, or bulk email a virus laden message out to all your contacts.
Attackers use both ‘brute force’ attacks in an attempt to guess your password alongside ‘phishing’ email which attempts to trick users to enter their credentials into fake web sites from which they are harvested.
The good news is that Microsoft now offer two factor authentication (2FA) to all 365 business customers to offer a high strength, second level of protection. This security takes the form of either a text message to your phone or a regularly changing password from a mobile app alongside your standard username / password combo.
Westcom can help set-up 2FA for your Office 365 users to help better protect your businesses data and reputation. Contact us today for more information on how to enable this feature.
Microsoft also offer a short video guide which is available here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office
