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Secure Score

Microsoft Secure Score Series – 15 – Do not expire passwords

Research has found that when periodic password resets are enforced, passwords become less secure. Users tend to pick a weaker password and vary it slightly for each reset. If a user creates a strong password (long, complex and without any pragmatic words present) it should remain just as strong in 60 days as it is today. It is Microsoft’s official security position to not expire passwords periodically without a specific reason, and recommends that cloud-only tenants set the password policy… 

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Microsoft Secure Score Series – 14 – Designate more than one global admin

Designate more than one global admin Having more than one global administrator helps if you are unable to fulfill the needs or obligations of your organization. It’s important to have a delegate or an emergency account someone from your team can access if necessary. It also allows admins the ability to monitor each other for signs of a breach. Having too many global admins is no good. But having only one global admin is even worse. Let’s talk about global… 

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Microsoft Secure Score Series – 13 – Set automated notifications for new and trending cloud applications in your organization

Set automated notifications for new and trending cloud applications in your organization With Cloud Discovery policies, you can set alerts that notify you when new apps are detected within your organization. And again, we’re back at Cloud App Security. Earlier I showed how MCAS can help you to discover shadow IT in your organization by ingesting your firewall and proxy log files. Today, we take a look at the app discovery policies that are available. If you are new to… 

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Microsoft Secure Score Series – 12 – Turn on customer lockbox feature

Turning on the customer lockbox feature requires that approval is obtained for data center operations that grants a Microsoft employee direct access to your content. Access may be needed by Microsoft support engineers if an issue arises. There’s an expiration time on the request and content access is removed after the support engineer has fixed the issue. Today we are going to talk about the Customer Lockbox feature in Office 365. Some privacy regulations like HIPAA and FEDRAMP require procedures… 

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Microsoft Secure Score Series – 10 – Discover trends in shadow IT application usage

Add a data source in automatic log upload for Cloud App Security Discovery to identify applications in your organization that run without official approval. After configuration, Cloud App Security Discovery will analyze firewall traffic logs to provide visibility into cloud applications’ usage and security posture. Today, we take a look at Cloud Discovery. With Cloud Discovery you can analyze your firewall and proxies log files, to track down shadow IT and determine the risk that is coming with the use… 

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Microsoft Secure Score Series – 09 – Do not allow users to grant consent to unmanaged applications

Tighten the security of your services by regulating the access of third-party integrated apps. Only allow access to necessary apps that support robust security controls. Third-party applications are not created by Microsoft, so there is a possibility they could be used for malicious purposes like exfiltrating data from your tenancy. Attackers can maintain persistent access to your services through these integrated apps, without relying on compromised accounts. Today we take a look at a serious problem in the modern IT… 

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Microsoft Secure Score Series – 08 – Use Cloud App Security to detect anomalous behavior

Cloud App Security anomaly detection policies provide User & Entity Behavior analytics (UEBA) and advanced threat detection across your cloud environment. Today we take a look at Cloud App Security. I recently wrote a blog about the new activity policies in Cloud App Security, so if your organization uses Teams, you should definitely take a look a that one. The improvement action we’re talking about has no user impact and might no increase your score right away. But if you… 

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Microsoft Secure Score Series – 06 – Enable policy to block legacy authentication

Today, most compromising sign-in attempts come from legacy authentication. Older office clients such as Office 2010 don’t support modern authentication and use legacy protocols such as IMAP, SMTP, and POP3. Legacy authentication does not support multi-factor authentication (MFA). Even if an MFA policy is configured in your environment, bad actors can bypass these enforcements through legacy protocols. In this blog post, we take a look at legacy authentication and how to block it on your tenant. Legacy protocols are not… 

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