It’s not unusual for small or medium sized businesses to want to minimise software costs and purchase the bear minimum where possible.
In the case of Microsoft, not everyone can afford to fork out for the Microsoft 365 Enterprise E5 license that comes with everything except the kitchen sink, and may lean towards more economical options such as Office 365 E3 or perhaps the 365 Standard license. Now both of these provide suitable capabilities, but predominantly lack any form of security features, which in this current day should be on everyone’s radar.
Here’s where the Microsoft 365 Business Premium licence comes in to it’s own for those wishing to dip their toes in to adding additional layers of security to their tenant without breaking the bank.
Sounds like a sales pitch
What if I were to tell you that by implementing the licensed capabilities, you have a far greater chance of reducing risks from accidental or malicious events occurring.
For starters, let’s talk about email.
Whether you’re a sole trader or have several hundred employees, there’s a good chance you receive a substantial quantity of phishing, spam or even malicious emails on a daily basis. And statistically you’ve most likely clicked a link or opened an attachment that resulted in someone bad happening.
Whilst Microsoft email has some core features out of the box, it really lacks critical policies to really help protect you from malicious events. Here’s where Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 comes in to it’s own.
As part of the Business licence, you’re suddenly able to leverage enterprise grade security, protecting your you, your staff, your data and company reputation from the ever growing email threats.
Ok, so what extra email security features do I get?
Defender for Office 365 comes in two flavours, plan 1 and plan 2. P2 is perhaps aimed at larger companies who wish to perform additional tasks such as advanced threat hunting, automated investigation & response or simulation training. However, P1 has more than enough features to satisfy the majority of people.
Anti-Phishing
User and Domain impersonation protection (ensures the email is from who it says it is)
Advanced Phishing thresholds
Safe Attachments
Email attachments and files within OneDrive, Teams & SharePoint are scanning for viruses
Safe Links
Web links in email, Office clients and Teams are scanned to determine if they're malicious or not
Improved Reporting
It's an absolute no brainer and provides a huge return on investment should you decide to use it.
Any other benefits to the Premium licence?
Absolutely
Defender for Business (Defender for Endpoint Plan 1)
Up to 300 users
Up to five devices per user
Enterprise-grade protection across your laptops, desktops and mobile devices
Threat and Vulnerability Management
Next-gen antivirus protection
Endpoint detection and response
Automated investigation and response
Mobile Device Management (Intune)
Application Deployment
Remote wipe
Policy management (compliance, Defender for Business etc)
Entra Plan 1
Implement stronger policies and rules to protect your accounts & application access
Windows 10 / 11 Business
Upgrades existing licence to the business version
Data Loss Prevention (Purview)
Identify, monitor and automatically protect sensitive data across Exchange, SharePoint and OneDrive for Business
Microsoft Defender XDR
A Unified portal where you can monitor, configure and response to security related activities.
What about the costs?
Microsoft 365 Business Standard £10.30 user/month
Microsoft 365 Business Premium £18.10 user/month
In Summary
To elevate your company's security posture to the next level, I genuinely can't recommend the Premium licence enough for the additional features you get. Whilst there are "plan 2" options available for some of the capabilities mentioned above, even by implementing plan 1 products, you will make a fantastic enhancement to the protection of your employees, data and reputation from malicious threats.
To review your existing platform and explore such enhancements, please get in touch to discuss how Security Ninja can help you get there!
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