Planning for Office 365 Gaps

There is a major shift happening in the world of enterprise IT systems. Many organizations are trading on-premises systems for cloud-based solutions, a move that brings virtually limitless scalability, storage, and accessibility – usually at a lower cost and with reduced complexity. Global adoption of cloud enterprise productivity platforms hit an all-time high of 81% in 2018, up from 24% in 2014.

If you’re a longtime Microsoft customer, a logical first step in making the journey from on-premises to the cloud is to move your email to Microsoft Office 365. Office 365 is Microsoft’s fastest-growing business. According to Gartner, 84% of IT decision-makers indicated that they are currently using or planning to use Office 365 in the near future.

Challenges with Office 365

Even though Office 365 is the cloud email management service of choice for a growing majority of organizations, it is not flawless or risk-free. On the surface, it seems to check all the right boxes: resilient architecture, ease-of-use, and security features, to name a few. However, what isn’t as obvious is the resilience gaps that occur when you become an Office 365 customer. The reality is, you become fully reliant on a single vendor for security, data retention, and email continuity. Email-borne threats, such as phishing, ransomware, and impersonation attacks, are leading to unprecedented financial and data loss, as well as negatively impacting productivity.

See also: Does Office 365 Deliver the Email Security and Resilience Enterprises Need

Building cyber resilience for your business email

The best way to protect your organization is to implement a cyber resilience strategy for Office 365 that protects users and reduces the risks resulting from technology failure, human error, or malicious intent. These risks only increase as more organizations migrate to Office 365, making it a higher-value target for cybercriminals.
What can organizations do? The answer is not to postpone your move to Office 365 but rather to plan the move carefully. Make sure you have a cyber resilience strategy that can address a diverse set of email-borne threats; robust continuity options that solve unplanned downtime; and the ability to recover lost, deleted, or corrupted data after an attack.

Ignoring the pitfalls that come with relying on a single vendor for resilience increases your risk profile and potential for business-impacting losses. With the right planning, cyber resilience strategy, and third-party cloud services, you can make the move to Office 365 with confidence. There are three main risks that businesses need to consider when making the move to office 365:

1. Security
2. Archiving
3. Continuity

Download this white paper by Mimecast to learn about the impact of these risks as well as potential solutions to mitigate them. Subscribe to Whitepapers.online and learn about the best ways to secure your business interest.