Securing critical M365 collaboration applications

Microsoft collaboration applications such as Teams and OneDrive are essential for businesses in today's digital world. While they offer a great platform for communication and collaboration, they have become frequent targets of cyberattacks.

Over a million organizations use Microsoft Teams for effective collaboration, including document collaboration, instant messaging, and file sharing. The ability to access and share data from any device, from anywhere gives organizations the flexibility they need to stay agile and efficient.

The security of Microsoft's collaboration applications is a priority for many businesses. Unfortunately, built-in security features and Microsoft Defender for Microsoft 365 (MDO) are not sufficient to thoroughly protect organizations against advanced content-based attacks.

Microsoft suggests organizations not solely rely on the built-in antivirus as a single point of defense against malware. Microsoft further suggests, "to investigate and implement anti-malware protection at various layers and apply best practices for securing their enterprise infrastructure."

MDO is designed to protect against known threats. However, it is unable to detect new or unknown threats in real time or provide proactive threat scanning capabilities. For example, MDO lacks real-time detection of malicious documents or URLs containing malware.  Furthermore, MDO is incapable of detecting sophisticated targeted attacks without the assistance of additional third-party tools. This leaves organizations vulnerable to cyberattacks and / or administratively burdened with managing “another” solution stack.

Therefore, it’s essential to implement an additional layer of security that provides rapid and proactive defense measures, but remains administratively simple.

Throughout this article, there are examples and scenarios where MDO lacks in being the top security solution for managed service providers, especially when it comes to protecting organizations’ collaboration environments.

Speed is a priority when detecting threats and malicious content in collaboration cloud applications to identify and prevent threats before they reach end users and place critical data and security infrastructure at risk. Acronis Collaboration App Security for Microsoft 365 (M365) is specifically designed to replace or augment the security capabilities included in MDO.

The Acronis solution dynamically scans all content, including files and URLs, to deliver real-time detection of all content-based threats and provide instant, actionable intel. With the most rapid detection engine on the market, teams are alerted immediately when any malicious content is detected. The detection engine searches for threats such as:

·                                  Ransomware and malware

·                                  Malicious URLs embedded in files

·                                  Advanced attacks such as APT and zero day

Acronis’ Collaboration App Security solution includes the capability to mitigate threats quickly and efficiently. It also has the ability to quarantine suspicious files to a secure area for further analysis, which can prove invaluable in protecting the integrity of an organization's data. Organizations should search for a security solution for their collaboration apps that prioritizes threats before they reach end users, while maintaining business continuity.

Investigating and mitigating threats takes time and requires overhead costs for organizations. For service providers, managing all clients’ M365 collaboration environments is not sustainable as each client will have threats that need to be mitigated. A comprehensive incident response and support system offers an important security boost for many organizations using Microsoft collaboration applications to further ensure business continuity.

A managed incident response service offers resource-constrained organizations support from SOC experts who can investigate and remediate security incidents. Acronis’ Collaboration App Security for M365 comes with a fully managed incident response service. Enabling service providers to give their clients access to soc analysts, without having to bear the cost and overhead. The incident service response comes with:

·                24/7 availability

·                Monitors, analyzes, and reports all incidents

·                Provides rapid alerting and analysis of malicious attempts

·                Expert assessment of false positives and false negatives

·                Contains and remediates incidents

·                Maintains and optimizes policies

Managing multiple customers from a single console result in significant savings. Multitenant solutions can make it easier to quickly roll out new services and upgrades with limited administrative challenges. A multitenant solution takes administrative challenges away from service providers, especially when they have to manage multiple clients' security environments.

Service providers need a platform that can easily be deployed and integrated with other services such as email security and backup. The platform should also be able to easily scale up or down as needed, ensuring that service providers can meet customer needs without incurring expensive costs. Additionally, managed service providers should prioritize security vendors that can show incidents and alerts for threats in real time, with a simple dashboard.

Acronis enables service providers to increase revenue streams by rapidly launching services; Collaboration App Security for M365 is the latest addition to these services. Acronis reduces complexities involved in managing multiple clients and their specific security needs by providing a single platform that is easy to manage. It reduces costs by removing the need for additional IT staff or long-term contracts while offering a manageable environment with 24/7 technical support and instantaneous alerting capabilities.

Providing security for organizations' critical cloud collaboration applications is now more important than ever before. Acronis’ Collaboration App Security for M365 is an advanced security solution that provides comprehensive protection against content-based attacks. Service providers can now have 360-degree advanced threat protection for content-based attacks, designed to replace or augment Microsoft's security services.  Adding this to the Acronis Platform unlocks compelling new revenue opportunities for Acronis partners.

Features of Acronis Collaboration App Security for Microsoft 365 include:

·       Protection against ransomware and malware: Acronis guards M365 collaboration apps against the ever-present threat of ransomware and malware.

·       Defense against malicious URLs: Acronis ensures the environment is safeguarded against malicious URLs embedded in files.

·       Advanced threat protection: Acronis provides robust protection against advanced attacks, including APT and zero day, giving organizations peace of mind.

·       Integrated managed incident response: A 24/7 service that can reduce a team's resource requirements by up to 75%. This service ensures that M365 deployment, administration and other security capabilities can benefit from several advantages.

·       Single-click management and multitenancy: Acronis API and unified console enable users to manage all customer data protection, cybersecurity and endpoint management services.

Learn more here.