National Cyber Security Centre recommends securing your Office

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC is part of GCHQ) has recently recommended securing Office 365 with better configuration and upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10. The UK Government's NCSC is tasked with helping to make the UK a safe place to work online.

Securing Office 365 with better configuration

"We believe that anyone with an Office 365 account would benefit from acting on the security recommendations in this advisory. From small businesses through to large enterprises, implementing measures such as Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) should be a high priority." - National Cyber Security Centre.

As previously discussed, multi-factor authentication is an additional level of security that prevents access to your Office 365 account even if a third-party obtains both your username and password. "Like many cloud-based services, you can reach your Office 365 email from anywhere on any device. As a natural part of doing business, users freely give their email address out and if your password is easy to guess then someone has access to your email," says Chris Joberns, managing director at Strident.

Multi-factor authentication can be easily to set up and uses an app on your smartphone to generate a random and frequently changing code. Your password and this time-sensitive code are then required to access your web mail, so a hacker would need access to your phone as well. An alternative to single-use codes is only allowing devices to log in from a trusted IP address (a specific location) or pre-registering your specific device with Microsoft Office. Each of these methods has its pro's and con's and we are happy to discuss them with you.

One year left for Windows 7 support

"Malware can spread much more easily on obsolete platforms because, without security updates, known vulnerabilities will remain un-patched. As a result, it's crucial to move away from them as quickly as possible." - National Cyber Security Centre.

Microsoft has announced that it will no longer support its Windows 7 operating system after 14th January 2020. PCs running the system will continue to operate, but will no longer receive security updates. We will continue to support customers who have Windows 7, but without security updates they are leaving themselves open to malicious attacks.

Windows 10 was launched in 2015 and has proven to be a stable and reliable platform. Businesses should be looking to upgrade as soon as possible to avoid the potentials cost of a security breach.

What to do next?

For the technically inquisitive the full NCSC advisory notices can be found at Using MFA with Office 365 and End of Life for Windows 7. To find out more about setting up 2FA on your Office 365 account and upgrading from Windows 7, contact the Strident Helpdesk.

If you're not a Strident customer, contact Chris on 01473 835 280 to find out about our professional IT support services.