Microsoft Office 365 Security Alerts
Secure your clients’ Microsoft 365 tenants in minutes. Simply connect SaaS Alerts to M365. That’s it!
Microsoft 365 is the most widely used productivity platform in the world, which also makes it the #1 target of criminal hackers, identity thieves and state-sponsored espionage teams. A Microsoft Office 365 cyber security solution can automatically shut down attacks before they impact the #1 platform your clients rely on to run their business.
SaaS Alerts is the premier Microsoft Office 365 security tool for MSPs to safeguard your clients’ most important business applications from cyber threats.
Office 365 Security Monitoring and Alerting
When bad actors infiltrate your clients’ environments, it’s tough to spot without a comprehensive Microsoft 365 security monitoring solution in place. SaaS Alerts monitors more than 50 different events within the Microsoft 365 environment to detect troubling account behavior and uncover the presence of bad actors.
Here are just a few of the actions SaaS Alerts will identify:
- Bad actors successfully logging in from outside of approved locations
- Internal or external actors exfiltrating data
- Dangerous file sharing practices
- Unauthorized SaaS application usage (shadow IT)
- Security configuration changes
- Unauthorized devices
- Dangerous inbox rule behavior
Once detected, Microsoft security alerts are sent via email or text message. Alerts can also create tickets in your PSA solution to efficiently surface security issues to your technicians without disrupting their regular workflow.
“You cannot get a more reliable deployment and product. You literally just turn it on and it’s already working.”
Automated Remediation of Threats
But what if you didn’t need to wait for a technician? A lot can happen in the few minutes it takes for a technician to respond to a ticket. And what if the Office 365 alert is triggered during off hours? Bad actors can wreak havoc in a matter of minutes, let alone hours.
That’s where the SaaS Alerts Respond module comes in. Respond allows you to take automated actions in response to Microsoft security alerts. Was there a successful login from an unauthorized location? Respond can automatically lock the account, giving your team valuable time to properly act before any significant damage is done.
Microsoft Security Recommendations and Secure Score Optimization
Most SMBs lack the knowledge needed to properly configure Microsoft 365 security settings to protect against cyber threats. Instead, they rely on you, their managed service provider.
But your team is already stretched thin, making it difficult to find time to manually optimize and maintain security configurations across every client. The result? Possible gaps in your clients’ security posture.
As the SaaS security landscape continues to evolve and M365 security configurations continue to get more complex, this will become an even greater challenge. The Fortify module within SaaS Alerts simplifies this process and helps ensure your clients’ security scores remain within acceptable levels.
With Fortify you can:
- Apply Microsoft security recommendations 1x across all your tenants
- See your clients’ security score compared to benchmarks
- Run a vulnerability assessment to easily see the security posture of each client
- Get alerted if a security score regresses, so you can take immediate action
“When it comes to security and compliance in Microsoft 365, it’s a moving target. Microsoft is constantly innovating and finding things they need to draw our attention to, which means that the system has become a living thing. Fortify helps us narrow that gap a little bit more.”
FAQs
Microsoft data loss prevention (DLP) is a security feature within Microsoft’s suite of services that helps organizations protect sensitive information from being inadvertently shared or leaked. DLP policies can be configured to identify, monitor and protect confidential data based on pre-defined rules and criteria.
Given the breadth of services and the amount of data stored and processed, there are a number of security risks associated with not monitoring Office 365:
- Unauthorized Access: Without proper monitoring, attackers could gain unauthorized access to sensitive company data, emails, documents, and more.
- Data Breaches: Without monitoring for suspicious activity, data breaches could go undetected, exposing sensitive company and client information.
- Account Compromise: If user accounts are compromised, malicious actors could use them for spear-phishing attacks, spreading malware, or stealing data. Monitoring can detect unusual behavior indicative of a compromised account.
- Loss of Intellectual Property: Important company documents and proprietary information could be accessed, modified, or deleted.
- Non-compliance: Many industries have regulatory compliance requirements around data security and privacy. Not monitoring Office 365 could lead to violations of these regulations.
- Insider Threats: It’s not just external threats that are a concern. Disgruntled employees or even unwitting staff could cause harm or leak data. Monitoring can help detect and mitigate such internal threats.
- Data Loss: Accidental or malicious deletions can occur. Monitoring ensures that such events are quickly noticed and potentially reversed.
- Brute Force Attacks: Without monitoring, repeated login attempts using various password combinations could go unnoticed.
- Phishing and Malware Distribution: Compromised accounts can be used to send phishing emails or distribute malware to both internal and external contacts.
- Inefficient Incident Response: When a security incident happens, the time to detect and respond is crucial. Without monitoring, there could be significant delays in noticing and addressing incidents.
- Loss of Reputation: Any of the above risks could result in public exposure, leading to a loss of customer trust and harm to the company’s reputation.
Microsoft provides several built-in tools and recommendations to help you evaluate and improve your clients’ Office 365 security. However, the primary indicator of security is the Microsoft secure score. The Microsoft secure score is a numerical score that represents the overall security posture of an organization. In order to improve a clients’ score, you need to implement every Microsoft security recommendation provided for each individual Office 365 tenant.
The Fortify module within SaaS Alerts pulls in the Microsoft secure score of each client and allows you to easily apply the security recommendations across one or all of your clients in minutes.
The Microsoft native alerting system, often used within the context of Microsoft 365 and Azure environments, has several limitations that can affect the effectiveness of the system in detecting and responding to security threats. Here are some of the key limitations:
1. Complex Configuration
Setting up and configuring the native alerting system can be complex, requiring a deep understanding of the various Microsoft services and how they interaction with one another.
2. Limited Customization
The ability to customize alerts is often restricted. MSPs might find it challenging to tailor alerts to specific client needs or to filter out noise from irrelevant alerts.
3. Integration Challenges
Integrating Microsoft native alerts with third-party security information and event management (SIEM) systems or other security tools can be challenging, limiting the ability to create a cohesive security monitoring and response strategy.
4. Alert Fatigue
Users often experience alert fatigue due to the high volume of alerts generated, many of which can be false positives. This can lead to important alerts being overlooked or ignored.
5. Delayed Alerts
There can be delays in alert generation and notification, which can hinder your ability to quickly respond to security incidents.
6. Scalability Issues
As organizations grow and their IT environments become more complex, the native alerting system may struggle to scale accordingly, leading to performance issues.
7. Limited Visibility
The system may offer limited visibility into certain types of activities or threats, particularly those that span across multiple environments or are outside the scope of Microsoft services.
8. Reporting Limitations
Reporting capabilities can be basic and may not meet the detailed reporting requirements needed for thorough security analysis and compliance.
