Security is a journey not a destination and that’s what makes it so hard when dealing with technology. One of the things that I believe that makes Office 365 the best product on the market is Microsoft’s commitment to security and compliance. A great place to start if you aren’t already aware is the
which has a huge amount of information around security for products like Office 365. If you have a security question about Office 365, start there.
What you may not be aware of is that Microsoft has just made available a dedicated an Office 365 Service Trust Portal for each Office 365 tenant. Once you sign up, you’ll find a vast array of security and compliance information tailored specifically for your Office 365 tenant. Here’s how you sign up.
Start by visiting:
https://trustportal.office.com/
You’ll be presented with the page shown above which you’ll need to login as an Office 365 global administrator.
After successfully logging in you need to approve access from the Office 365 Service Trust Portal to your Office 365 tenant. Simply select the Accept button to proceed.
(now for some reason I’ve had to repeat the login and accept twice a couple of times for different tenants I enabled, so if it doesn’t work the first time, simply try again)
You’ll then be asked to enter you region and industries. Simply select from the pull down options.
When you have made your selections select the Save button to the right.
In a moment or two you’ll receive a message that your configuration has been save and the Trust Portal has been updated with relevant information.
You can now navigate to the menu options on the left of the page, like Compliance Reports which are shown above. Here you will see all the security and compliance information available to you as you can see. You can also use the options at the top of the page to easily search for specific information.
One of the first options I suggest you take a look at is the Office 365 Customer Security Considerations spreadsheet. You’ll find details of this here:
https://blogs.office.com/2015/11/23/announcing-office-365-customer-security-considerations-preview/
You’ll find it by selecting Trust Documents from the menu on the left,
From the options on the left locate Office 365 Customer Security Considerations Preview. Selecting this will download a spreadsheet which you can save locally.
When you open the spreadsheet you should see something like that shown above.
If you take a look at all the content in the spreadsheet you’ll find links, PowerShell commands, best practices and more. There is also an Office 365 Customer Security Considerations Preview Reference Guide available from the portal to help you use the spreadsheet.
Security is a very important aspect of cloud computing and given resources like the new Office 365 Service Trust Portal I am confident that Microsoft is making available the best information needed to help both customers and resellers understand and better secure their information in their commercial services like Office 365. This is yet another reason why Office 365, for me, stands out from the pack when it comes to being serious about business cloud computing.
CIAOPS 