Cloud apps like Microsoft Office 365 are becoming mainstream. Although the core of Office 365 is the email application, the product also includes many traditional Microsoft Office applications, as well as newer apps. While Office 365 focuses on workplace collaboration, allowing the open exchange of information, it’s also a prime target for attackers.
Embracing the Cloud without Compromising Security
The attractiveness of Office 365 to attackers has prompted organizations to consider additional security as they make their move to Office 365. Targeted attacks, rogue access, data leaks, and email threats (for example, SPAM, phishing, and malware) all pose significant threats to cloud-based applications.
Microsoft ships Office 365 with some built-in security. However, enterprises need to build on and extend on these basic security controls. Organizations require expanded information and threat protection controls that work across heterogeneous environments, that are capable of securing a wide variety of enterprise applications, and that support hybrid deployment models. It is especially critical for organizations that operate in a highly-regulated industry, or in an industry with unique risk profiles that are prone to a higher volume of attacks. This is why leading industry analysts like IDC and Gartner recommend including third-party security products in a comprehensive Office 365 security framework.
How Symantec for Office 365 Can Help
Symantec for Office 365 is designed as a comprehensive security solution that seamlessly integrates with Office 365 for greater protection of your valuable information while detecting and remediating increasingly sophisticated threats. With Symantec for Office 365, organizations can:
- Extend security controls to better shield email from advanced malware
- Protect against targeted attacks
- Increase safeguarding of business-sensitive information
- Control access with numerous user-friendly and strong authentication options
Symantec for Office 365 combines enterprise-strength email security, threat protection, data loss prevention, and authentication to extend Office 365 security.
Example Scenario
Let’s say that one of the salesmen on your team, Jim, is at a coffee shop having a cup of mocha and getting some work done. Office 365 provides Jim the flexibility to work anywhere, allowing creation and sharing of data and files that he can share on the fly with the team, partners, and clients.
However, you want to ensure that access to Office 365 is secure. And, it’s got to be quick and easy. Fortunately, your team uses Symantec for Office 365. Jim brings up the single sign-on portal, uses his fingerprint with VIP to authenticate, and he’s logged in seamlessly.
Jim wants to email some specs to a contractor friend for feedback. Fortunately, the Symantec DLP Cloud Service for Email identifies that the file contained sensitive information, which could possibly get critical information into the wrong hands if shared. When Jim tries to send the email via Office 365, it gets blocked.
Symantec’s data protection technology includes fingerprinting, keyword matching, and vector machine learning capabilities with support for more than 330 different file types (structured and unstructured data).
With Symantec Advanced Threat Protection, organizations are also protected from outside threats infecting Office 365. With both virtual and physical sandboxes, Cynic, Symantec’s cloud-based sandboxing and detonation service, can catch even virtual machine-aware malware. Symantec Advanced Threat Protection can also correlate threat events from email with endpoint devices and network to quickly contain and remediate targeted attacks. Internal information is augmented with global telemetry from the Symantec Global Intelligence Network, one of the world’s largest cyber intelligence networks.
Symantec for Office 365 helps ensure uniform security standards and policies across the entire IT environment, while monitoring threats across all control points (email, web, and endpoint) to make them easier to detect. As more organizations adopt Office 365 and build best practices for securing their deployments, Symantec is here to help.
In the following weeks, we’ll take a closer look at specific Symantec for Office 365 capabilities.