Office 365 security

I have been talking with potential customers this week over their requirements for future IT and it became obvious that a Cloud solution was what was needed - specifically Office 365.

One thing that has come up time and time again were the questions "how secure is it?" and "we work with clients who might not think this is secure enough - is it?".

So I have taken the time to research this and as you might think Microsoft has produced the most comprehensive and high quality information on this - so I have taken some of this from Microsoft and reproduced it here for people to have an overview of Office 365 security. You maybe sceptical about Microsoft telling you how great Microsoft Office 365 security is, but what they say here makes sense and is logical and relevant and I believe provides good detail and explanation to most security questions.



"With Office 365, it’s your data. You own it. You control it. And it is yours to take with you if you decide to leave the service. The core tenets of our approach to earning and maintaining your trust are:

 Built-in Security :

Office 365 is a security-hardened service, designed following the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle. We bring together the best practices from two decades of building enterprise software and managing online services to give you an integrated software-as-a-service solution.

At the service level, Office 365 uses the defense-in-depth approach to provide physical, logical, and data layers of security features and operational best practices. In addition, Office 365 gives you enterprise-grade, user and admin controls to further secure your environment.

Service-level security through defense-in-depth

Customer controls within the service

Security hardening and operational best practices

 Privacy by design :

When you entrust your data to Office 365 you remain the sole owner of the data: you retain the rights, title, and interest in the data you store in Office 365. It’s our policy to not mine your data for advertising purposes or use your data except for purposes consistent with providing you cloud productivity services.

Your data is not used for advertising

You have extensive privacy controls

You can take your data with you when you want

Continuous Compliance

Office 365 is a global service and continuous compliance refers to our commitment to evolve the Office 365 controls and stay up to date with standards and regulations that apply to your industry and geography. Because regulations often share the same or similar controls, this makes it easier for Microsoft to meet the requirements of new regulations or those specific to your organization and industry.

In addition, Office 365 provides admin and user controls, including eDiscovery, legal hold, and data loss prevention, to help you meet internal compliance requirements. These require no additional on-premises infrastructure to use.

Proactive processes to meet your compliance needs

Customer controls for organizational compliance

Independently verified to meet evolving standards

Transparent Operations

Moving to a cloud service shouldn’t mean losing access to knowing what’s going on. With Office 365, it doesn’t. We aim to be transparent in our operations so you can monitor the state of your service, track issues, and have historical view of availability.

You know where your data resides and who has access

Visibility into availability and changes to the service

Financially backed guarantee of 99.9% uptime"

If you would like to read even more detail about the security that wraps Office 365 up then please go to https://products.office.com/en-us/business/office-365-trust-center-cloud-computing-security?tab=7d4bf5d5-8549-acb8-3852-a62cc997fb45

I hope this has reassured anybody who has previously had doubts about Office 365 Cloud security and now understands that a great deal has been done to make O365 a robust and secure product that can be used with safety and reassurance.

 

Raise your virtual glass to PukkaGenTek and say Cheers and Welcome!!!

Here's a toast to our newly re-branded business. Here is some of what we offer customers in varying sectors:

ENTERPRISE

For companies that are no longer start-ups, SOHO or micro businesses but would like the same friendly, professional support service.

For companies who would like to be able to have any member of their staff pick up their phone or send an e-mail requesting support an unlimited number of times for any supported IT problem; or if the need arose expect an engineer to attend onsite any number of times or fix it remotely if possible.

For companies who would like corporate standards of IT monitoring 24/7 with an allocated IT manager; but who can’t afford that.

We can provide solutions to all of the above by providing the unlimited support, monitored by professional systems constantly and managed by experienced and fully qualified engineers – who will also fix any problems you’re experiencing.

We can offer support in many shapes and types; whether you just want a one off ad hoc call for a problem or issue or need a bit more for consultancy to give you strategic help or support. We can also provide a more consistent, robust and prioritised contract IT support which means you’ll always be uppermost in our thoughts when you need urgent help.

When your business is under our care and attention with one of our service contracts you will realise the highest standards of customer care and technical support engineering. When your business has grown to this size you need it to keep working and growing and this is where we can help support that.

If you want a service that is uniquely local but regionally professional providing robust managed solutions to a business that has outgrown its roots then look no further but get in touch with us and we’ll take care of all your IT cares, worries and concerns.

SMALL BUSINESS

Would you like to operate your business as a larger business and take that step beyond Micro, SOHO or start-up but don’t believe you are ready; perhaps we can help, by providing one of the first essential steps which is a first class, amazing, corporate style IT support for business, yet at a reasonable price you can afford.

We are an IT support company that specialises in SME businesses and we believe that extends from 1-50 machines size businesses as well as its bigger brothers. So if you would like to have unlimited telephone advice and help taken with unlimited remote support and on-site engineers when required as well then you can. If you’d like to have experienced and fully qualified Microsoft engineers available to you for unlimited problems then you can. If you’d like to have all your systems monitored and managed using corporate end technology and running 24/7 then you can; and you can have all this for a price that would surprise you.

We can offer you rolling monthly, no tie-in contracts that provide you with all-encompassing service contracts that offer comprehensive IT support for all the IT devices and systems you might have within your offices. Unlike a lot of other IT support companies we won’t just offer you an insurance style contract but instead we will provide a pro-active, managed and 24/7 monitored system contract. Along with that we can go on to offer further services such as high quality, low cost backup solutions and the best in anti-virus installed products; again both of these provided under the pro-active managed and monitored solution service.

If you want to be able to experience the best in SME IT support for a reasonable cost no matter what your size then talk to us and we’ll show you how you can get on with your business; warm in the knowledge that all your IT concerns are taken care of.

HOME USERS

A lot of us buy a PC or a laptop, or maybe both or maybe in a family there are several of these; worse still whilst they’re re all working fine not a problem, but then you have problems with them. Perhaps you have a relation or friend, but they’re not qualified or completely sure or can’t look at it until next week or the following weekend?

We can provide a high quality service typically only available to businesses in the form of our qualified experienced engineers. A one off ad hoc fix or perhaps a review and health check of your IT stock? Perhaps you would like to be relieved of the worry and concerns around all these computers around your house just waiting to go wrong.

Maybe you would even care to take out insurance in the shape of a Home support contract which for a very reasonable no tie-in monthly payment could provide you with the comfort blanket of knowing you are under full IT support just like a big business.

As we offer the same contract and proactive cover and support that we provide to our business support customers we will constantly monitor and manage all aspects of your day to day computer usage, giving your computers a good housekeeping routine on a regular basis. Also, likewise we can offer further products such as business class backup routines and anti-virus software and a host of other products and services that you may need to keep that warm glowing feeling of being under support with us.

We will care for all your IT needs to stop life being a computer gamble, and provide that computer knowledge, help and advice that you can rely on and trust to be completely professional.

So if you need help now then contact us; or if you want to take the computer gamble out of everyday life then call to discuss how we can provide a leading, friendly and professional solution to this quandary.

shop window and Internet webpage - analogy

Whilst working with a website builder to have a new website built I have realized that a website serves the function of a shop window. This is perhaps nothing startlingly new in terms of a concept but the analogy is so strong with me, as I work on my new shiny website that I thought I had to share this concept.

40 years ago the high street represented the current internet, with all those glowing, interesting shop windows showing off their wares and beckoning you into the shop to peruse and perhaps purchase. Now we have the same as we surf the internet, all those Homepages enticing and beckoning you to purchase their goods or services and if not then at least to enjoy the front page.

So I have used this as my driver, the definition of my website Homepage as a shop front and all the various hyperlinks and sub-sets, products and services that are available to the surfing potential customer who cares to open the door and step inside.

I keep this thought close to my heart when I decide on how my website looks and feels and operates; hopefully this is what encourages people.

PC versus Mac or Microsoft versus Apple

As the Director of a busy IT support company I deal with PCs, laptops and Macs on a daily basis. I am constantly asked by both businesses and home users which device is the best. This question is like asking which car is the best, and just like that analogy is as subjective. “Best” begs the question, in what terms and to who is anything the best, but in this article I will attempt to put both sides of the argument as it currently stands and aim to pre-empt those questions that are regularly asked of me. I am not setting out to write a didactic piece of techno-babble aimed at having you rushing out to swap your computer for one or the other of these devices, but rather a reasoned and balanced set of discussion pieces, so that you dear reader can at least have the benefit of some of my knowledge and experience, which you can judge for yourself how useful it is in the quest to decide which is the “best”.

In my opinion there are 7 key aspects that differentiate the two products and these fall into the rough category of: cost, looks, security, likeability & usability, interface, compatibility and support. 

In terms of cost there is no doubt an obvious and very large difference between Mac products and PC products. However, it must be said that to buy a MacBook Pro equivalent in a PC laptop in terms of components fitted would bring the obvious price differential much closer if indeed it did not overtake it. So, the issue here is that Apple does not sell cheaper end models with low end processors and memory whereas there is a plethora of PC manufacturers all vying for the market share, so causing market forces to push the prices down. The obvious maxim here would appear to be that generally you get what you pay for, but that if all you need is a basic machine to do e-mails and a bit of web surfing then you may ask do you need that performance offered by Mac for that price tag.

As far as look’s go, PCs both laptop and desktop have caught up in recent years forgoing their traditional boring design, now offering some very attractive product ranges and also featuring the monobloc design, always offered by Apple with the base unit and monitor integrated for that refined and minimalistic look. Again, what we have here is personal taste as to what you like to see and feel when you are working or perhaps what looks good in your lounge, although most people when presented with an Apple Mac in stores are always attracted to the Apple look and feel – perhaps most readily drawn by the Apple design philosophy i.e. single aluminium block bodies for their laptops, separate and lighted keys on the keypad and bright glossy LED glass displays. 

Nearly all internet security companies would agree that both Macs and PCs are just as much at risk from an internet security perspective, particularly from phishing attacks, but here is the big difference, the number of viruses and malware written for PCs far outweighs the number for Macs. Based on the most recent statistics Windows dominates the world’s operating systems market with a 91% share of that market, Apple having only 5% and the other 4% being owned by other operating systems. This bare fact alone, discounting the many and varied discussions about how robust the actual operating systems are, Windows or Mac OSX, just the sheer target scope for Windows to be attacked make them a far easier opportunity and although Mac OSX is intrinsically no more secure than Windows Vista or Windows 7 they have far fewer attacks as there are far fewer people writing hacks for them. What defines the security is that for either product if good anti-virus and malware software is run and updated regularly and all patches are downloaded from the relevant OS vendor then – in the main – all should be as well with one as the other providing the user is cautious.

Users of computers - in a very wide sweeping generalisation – appear to fall into two main categories; the mainstream and the uber-cool individualistic type, and as you may guess PCs and Macs appear to fit in that order. In terms of likeability people who don’t care about the general opinion tend to go for Apple whereas a lot of people like the large scale presence of PCs. There are lots of reasons for people’s choice here, but some of it may be down to being comfortable with Windows or not wanting to convert and having to learn a new operating system all over. Some of this is driven by the difference between a known – for many – OS such as Windows and a different way of working which is the Mac OSX. The interface is intrinsically similar but different enough in many key ways to cause many to pause in their choice, particularly driven by what they use at work or having already owned PCs or having children who use PCs. Traditionally the feedback from users in terms of usability of Macs is always extremely positive, with nearly all users asserting an extremely positive user experience, quoting simplicity, and productivity i.e. “my Mac just does it” also people like the look and feel of the Mac OSX, whereas there are many tales of frustration from PC users, although again the market balance means that there are countless more happy users and with Windows 7 this seems to be on the increase.

Some of the most strident voices against Macs as opposed to PCs are raised in the area of compatibility. This is a fact that is hard to argue on both sides, as again with Windows having the 91% market share nearly all software is developed and written with Windows in mind and all hardware is developed to connect and work with PCs first and perhaps Macs second. That is not to say that there is not always a way of finding something that will do the job from an alternate supplier, with a bit of searching, but frustration levels can be high when software and hardware bought and then taken home and installed or connected fails to operate correctly.

Finally, there is the support issue, once you have purchased your choice of computer, for fixing problems and faults that arise or maybe an upgrade is required or wanted. The sad fact is that there is minimal good quality IT support for Macs around and when you do find a good support company they will undoubtedly reflect the fact of their scarcity in their pricing.  PC support is widespread and there are many companies to be found that can carry out any fix, support or upgrade required. The last issue of upgrades is also tempered by the inability, on the whole, to upgrade Macs whereas PCs are easily upgradeable with new components if this is your choice or requirement; if you don’t have the skills or the interest but do have the need again there is a good company around the corner. Apple would say that once purchased it is extremely unlikely – due to the quality of the product – that you will need to upgrade your Mac.

Therefore, in conclusion the decision is as before one of very personal choice, driven by your personal requirements and ultimately what you want to pay and what you like the look and feel of and whether you are willing to go for the unique or happy to be mainstream. In essence the choice is how you feel the device of your choice will match your life and work and pocket. I hope I have at least clarified some of the areas around the choice.