At Clear Guidance, we are big advocates of anything that secures your company and data better. For that reason we recommend that all our clients use Microsoft 365 Business Premium licenses. There are a few big benefits that it adds:

• Additional email security: hyperlink screening can block people from visiting malicious links, and enhanced filtering such as watching for spoofing attacks. Business Premium will also test attachments for malicious intent by “detonating” the attachments in a special Microsoft sandbox environment.

• Additional device and cloud security, such as vulnerability scanning for software flaws, and extra security telemetry and alerts from users’ devices.

• Azure Information Protection: Office documents are protected even after they leave the business. You are able to set conditions on who is able to open, edit, print, etc. based off their 365 logins (non-365 users can sign up for a free account to let them access the documents). That way even once you share a document out (or a malicious employee steals it, someone else forwards it, etc.), your data is still protected.

• In place hold / litigation hold: we can immediately lock down an email account to track all changes and prevent deletion of any data. This is useful for malicious employees or terminations, as well as legal situations.

• Data loss prevention (DLP): conditional filtering to prevent sensitive data from being emailed such as social security numbers or credit card numbers

• Azure P1 - this special license provides extensive security around access and logins such as conditional access which allows logins to be blocked using conditions such as location (i.e. China, Russia, Africa)

• The “usual” Microsoft/Office 365 features such as email, SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, Office apps to install on your devices and more

All of this value comes at the cost of $264/year or $26.40/month!