Microsoft Office 365 Security Alerts
Secure your Microsoft 365 accounts in minutes.
Microsoft 365 is the world’s most widely used productivity platform — and that also makes it the No. 1 target for criminal hackers, identity thieves and state-sponsored espionage teams. Today, threat actors use sophisticated techniques such as token hijacking, account takeover, phishing and social engineering to bypass defenses. To stay ahead of these evolving SaaS threats, you need smarter security solutions like SaaS Alerts, which leverages machine learning to automatically detect and stop threats before they cause damage.
SaaS Alerts is the premier Microsoft 365 security platform that helps you monitor, detect and automatically respond to threats while efficiently maintaining a strong secure score.
Microsoft 365 Security Monitoring and Alerting
SaaS Alerts actively monitors over 80 different events across the Microsoft 365 environment to detect suspicious account activity and uncover potential threats.
Here are a few examples of what SaaS Alerts keeps an eye on:
- Unusual logins from unauthorized or unexpected locations
- Internal or external data exfiltration attempts
- Risky file-sharing behaviors
- Use of unauthorized SaaS applications (shadow IT)
- Security configuration changes
- Unauthorized device connections
- Suspicious inbox rule activity
Once detected, Microsoft security alerts are delivered to you via SMS, email, PSA tickets or mobile app. Routing options can be customized based on severity to keep your technicians focused and workflows seamless.
“You cannot get a more reliable deployment and product. You literally just turn it on and it’s already working.”
Automated Remediation of Threats
Protect your Microsoft 365 environment seamlessly — with zero human intervention. The SaaS Alerts Respond module allows you to take automated actions in response to Microsoft security alerts.
With the Respond module, you can:
- Block user sign-ins
- Force users to change their password on next sign-in
- Expire active account sessions
- Reset user passwords
- Set up MFA
- Delete user accounts
Prefer to stay in alert-only mode? SaaS Alerts also gives you the flexibility to receive alerts without triggering automatic response actions.
Microsoft Security Recommendations and Secure Score Optimization
Microsoft 365 security settings can be complex. Unfortunately, SMBs often rely on default security settings, which are often insufficient to defend against modern cyberthreats.
But your team is already stretched thin, making it difficult to find time to manually optimize and maintain security configurations across all environments. The result? Possible gaps in your security posture.
As the SaaS security landscape continues to evolve and M365 configurations grow more intricate, this challenge will only intensify. The Fortify module within SaaS Alerts simplifies the process and helps you maintain strong security scores with ease.
With Fortify you can:
- Apply Microsoft security recommendations across all accounts in just minutes
- Benchmark your security scores against industry standards
- Run vulnerability assessments to quickly understand your security posture
- Receive alerts when scores drop, 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 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 secure 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 managed tenant and allows you to easily apply the security recommendations across one or all of your tentants 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:
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 interact with one another.
Limited Customization
The ability to customize alerts is often restricted. SysAdmins might find it challenging to tailor alerts to specific business needs or to filter out noise from irrelevant alerts.
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.
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.
Delayed Alerts
There can be delays in alert generation and notification, which can hinder your ability to quickly respond to security incidents.
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.
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.
Reporting Limitations
Reporting capabilities can be basic and may not meet the detailed reporting requirements needed for thorough security analysis and compliance.