Microsoft 365 Managed Services

Windows updates can be easily overlooked when it comes to your security strategy. There are countless examples of organisations being breached due to hackers taking advantage of computers that don’t have the latest security patches. As part of this service, Circle Cloud will ensure your machines are patched to the latest Windows Updates.

Windows Updates also provide the ability to access the latest features released from Microsoft. Without these updates your users won’t be able to utilise all the latest features and innovations that are available through Microsoft 365. As part of this service, Circle Cloud will:

• Release security patches to all your machines after they have been tested and confirmed to be working
• Automate the installation of these patches on your machines in a regular time slot that is suitable for your organisation
• Circle Cloud will be alerted if a machine doesn’t check in for patches. A member of our service team will then contact the user to investigate and resolve the issue
• Provide reporting on the patching level of your computer estate

Performance & Capacity Monitoring

It’s important that you know if your organisation’s computers are performing correctly and that they are fit for purpose. Our remote monitoring agent collects performance data from your machines which allows us to:

- Use this on our helpdesk when troubleshooting user issues, making the process of identifying issues much more efficient

- Aid the customer in identifying systems that may need replacing or upgrading to ensure the right machines are prioritised when applying budget to hardware refreshes

- Receive alerts to our managed services teams when any events are detected that could indicate an impending fault on a user’s machine, such as a full or faulty hard drive, allowing us to intervene proactively and reduce downtime.

- Provide you with performance and capacity reports for your computer estate

It’s important that you know if your organisation’s computers are performing correctly and that they are fit for purpose. Our remote monitoring agent collects performance data from your machines which allows us to:

• Use this on our helpdesk when troubleshooting user issues, making the process of identifying issues much more efficient
• Aid the customer in identifying systems that may need replacing or upgrading to ensure the right machines are prioritised when applying budget to hardware refreshes
• Receive alerts to our managed services teams when any events are detected that could indicate an impending fault on a user’s machine, such as a full or faulty hard drive, allowing us to intervene proactively and reduce downtime.
• Provide you with performance and capacity reports for your computer estate

Onboarding new computers for existing and new employees can be time consuming if not done correctly. In a cloud environment where people expect to work remotely, it seems old fashioned to have to setup a computer for each person manually or attend the office to have an image applied to a machine. Windows Autopilot comes with Microsoft 365 Business Premium and allows the automation of building new computers to your organisation’s specification directly over the internet. Our Autopilot management service allows us to:

- Automatically sets up a user’s computer over the internet, including connecting the device to your Office 365 or Active Directory domain

- Ensure new starters are onboarded efficiently

- Automatically installs software that is appropriate for the specific user upon setup

- Configures office, Outlook and Teams for the user upon first logon

- As part of this service, we will build a test computer in our hosted environment that will be used as your standard configuration which will include your required software.

- This allows us to test automated application deployments and autopilot prior to releasing them to your users

Installing new software for users can be very inefficient if not managed correctly. Locating installation files, licenses and ensuring everybody is using the same version is not always simple. Using Microsoft Endpoint Manager, Circle Cloud can automate the installation of software, both for specific user types, as well as on a user’s request. Using Endpoint Manager, Circle Cloud will:

- Package your third party applications into Endpoint Manager to make them compatible with automated deployment

- Maintain an application library with all your organisation’s software within it, ensuring software versions are the same for all users

- Complete end user software installations upon request using Endpoint Manager

- Automatically deploy Apps to both iPhone & Android devices

For all the benefits your Microsoft 365 subscription provides, the cloud way of working also poses significant security challenges (such as the ability to login from anywhere on any device). As an organisation, the following challenges must be considered;

• What are we doing to prevent our users from logging into our cloud environment from personal devices that may not be secure? These devices can login, download emails and documents using OneDrive and SharePoint.
• How do we ensure that we are using best practices, such as multi-factor authentication, but only when we think it’s necessary to further validate a users’ identity?

As part of our managed service, Circle Cloud will configure conditional access to ensure that if a user connects to Office 365 on a device that isn’t owned by your organisation, they will be forced to confirm their identity with a text or authenticator app.

When a user is using an unknown device, such as a personal laptop or smartphone, Circle Cloud will only allow them to login and use the Office 365 Online Services, such as Outlook on the Web. However, they will be restricted from downloading documents or emails to their device.

Email has become one of the most significant attack vectors and the sophistication of social engineering and phishing attempts have increased dramatically over recent years. It seems most businesses have a story of an employee wrongfully transferring money or paying an invoice from a fictitious supplier as a result of malicious emails.

Included in our level 2 and 3 packages is Barracuda Advanced Threat Protection which is a multi-layered email security product that filters emails before they arrive in your Office 365 tenant. Barracuda ATP includes the following features and threat protection;

• Advanced Threat Protection
• Email encryption
• Data Loss Prevention

It also includes cloud-based protection against Spam, Email-borne viruses (inbound and outbound), Email-based malware, Data leaks, Phishing emails, Unsecured emails and Denial-of-Service attacks.

You are now using the cloud and have all your data stored within Office 365, reaping the rewards of its uptime guarantees. However, despite Office 365 providing version history features, backup is something organisations still need to consider in order to protect themselves from accidental deletion, or from the unlikely event of a Microsoft outage;

As part of the level 2 and 3 packages, Circle Cloud implement a backup solution that performs the following:

• Nightly backups of all your organisation’s mailboxes, OneDrive documents, SharePoint documents and Teams groups to a non-Microsoft datacentre.
• Backups are stored in Tier 3 & Tier 4 SSAE or SOC audited datacentres to ensure the security of your backup information
• Our managed services Team can perform immediate restores of mailboxes, OneDrive documents and SharePoint folders back to their original location
• The ability to have customised retention policies to ensure you are only storing backup data for as long as your compliance or regulatory requirements allow

Most organisations will have a security strategy for their endpoint devices which will typically include some fundamentals such as encryption technologies (e.g. Bitlocker), ensuring all devices have anti-virus running at all times, and ensuring devices are using a supported and recent version of Windows

The challenge for organisations has not necessarily been to implement the above security standards but to maintain them without manual check routines. Using Microsoft Endpoint Manager, Circle monitor the device continuously to ensure the above security measures are in place. A device that meets the security standards will be determined as a “Compliant Device” and a device that doesn’t will be deemed “Non-Compliant”. When a device is “Non-Compliant” the following happens:

- Conditional Access will restrict the device’s access to online resources, but only after the grace period for rectifying issues has passed

• The user will be notified that their device is non-compliant and will be advised of the grace period they have been given to rectify the non-compliance issue
• A case will be generated within our service desk and one of our managed service engineers will address the non-compliance issue

Encryption of laptops and desktops has been a fundamental security principal for many years and is no less relevant today. In short, if a device isn’t encrypted and it gets lost or stolen, then any data on that device (such as documents and emails) can be recovered. This poses a significant security threat to your organisation and would usually be an incident that needs reporting to the Information Commissioners Office.

This scenario becomes a more significant threat when considering the increased mobility of today’s IT users. An increase in travelling and working from home (as well as many other remote locations) increases the likelihood of a physical device being stolen, versus when devices are locked securely in the office.

As part of our managed service, Circle Cloud utilise Endpoint manager to enforce Bitlocker encryption on all desktops and laptops. This will be monitored using “Device Compliance Monitoring” to ensure that devices without Bitlocker can’t download company data and put this data at risk.

A staple of any security strategy is having anti-virus software running on all your computers. Equally as important is ensuring this anti-virus is kept up to date so it can handle new threats, and that regular scans are running, ensuring that your devices always have anti-virus installed. Circle Cloud’s managed service takes care of the management headache that comes with antivirus:

• We ensure all your devices have the latest anti-virus updates. If a device hasn’t checked in for updates, a member of our service team will be alerted and will rectify this by ensuring it’s updated.
• Schedule regular full scans on your computers
• If a device hasn’t had a full scan within the past two weeks, we will receive an alert and contact the user to ensure the machine is online and a scan is run

Barracuda Advanced Threat Protection (Mail Filtering)

Email has become one of the most significant attack vectors and the sophistication of social engineering and phishing attempts have increased dramatically over recent years. It seems most businesses have a story of an employee wrongfully transferring money or paying an invoice from a fictitious supplier as a result of malicious emails.

Included in our level 2 and 3 packages is Barracuda Advanced Threat Protection which is a multi-layered email security product that filters emails before they arrive in your Office 365 tenant. Barracuda ATP includes the following features and threat protection;

• Advanced Threat Protection
• Email encryption
• Data Loss Prevention

It also includes cloud-based protection against Spam, Email-borne viruses (inbound and outbound), Email-based malware, Data leaks, Phishing emails, Unsecured emails and Denial-of-Service attacks.

Most businesses are using Software as a Service (SaaS), browser based applications from multiple vendors within their business. This might be an online CRM such as Salesforce, a finance system such as Sage Online, or a Human Resources platform. The challenges that arise when using multiple browser based, SaaS offerings are;

• When your team have multiple sets of credentials for different applications it becomes confusing and inconvenient to manage. Using Microsoft 365 Single Sign on, your users will use their Office 365 credentials to access other online applications as well
• Leavers and security. When employees leave your business you need to ensure their accounts are disabled in all the online services they use individually. This isn’t something that is always done comprehensively, leaving the ex-employee the ability to still login to online services containing your company data. Using Single Sign On within Microsoft 365 allows us to remove all access to online services by simply disabling their Office 365 account, leaving you with peace of mind that they can no longer access your important data.

Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are commonly used with Microsoft 365 services to access email, documents and Teams. Accessing these services provides productivity and mobility benefits to your employees. However, it also provides further opportunities for security breaches to occur. It’s important to ensure that we have control over mobile devices when users have access to company information. Using Microsoft EndPoint Manager, Circle Cloud will perform the following;

• Create a device compliance policy which defines the security standards a device must meet before being able to install Outlook, Office and Teams such as;
  • Device must be encrypted
  • Device must have a pin code set (meeting complexity requirements)
  • Device must change pin code on a specified time interval (e.g. six months)
  • Device cannot be jail broken or rooted
  • Device must have a screen lock applied after ‘x’ amount of minutes, preventing a lost device being picked up and left open for somebody to view and extract information.
• Circle Cloud can wipe the device or specific Office applications of company data either when a device is lost, or an employee leaves the business
• Automatically deploy applications to users’ mobile devices

In order to provide a complete end to end solution to our customers, it’s important that Circle Cloud provide helpdesk support for any day to day issues your users may encounter when using their computers. Our helpdesk team will have the ability to assist users with Windows, Office and computer performance issues, and are available via email and phone. Using a remote agent that will be installed on all your user’s computers, our helpdesk team can remote control onto their device and provide immediate troubleshooting and support.

In order to ensure you get the most out of your organisation’s Office 365 platform, Circle Cloud provide end user support for issues encountered when using the Microsoft 365 platform. This includes issues relating to using email, OneDrive, SharePoint or Teams. Our helpdesk will be available to advise and remediate issues with any of these services.

Microsoft 365 Service Requests

Specific service requests are included in the managed service to aid our customers with adds, moves and changes within their business. We include the following as part of the service:

• Creating of new users and providing them with access to the relevant services
• Providing or changing an existing user’s level of access to a resource within Office 365, such as mailboxes, Teams, SharePoint etc.

The ability to have a log of all emails that are sent from and to your business is essential for most businesses. This service captures all emails when they are sent and received and stores them in a portal that is separate to Office 365. Additionally, this means that any emails that are deleted by employees within Office 365 are stored within the Barracuda solution. This ensures that no information is missing when a matter arises that requires the ability to search all mail activity.

A user friendly portal means we can delegate access to specific people within your organisation who can have this ability available to them on demand.

Ensuring information is accessible only by the people we intended has been a challenge for organisations for a long time. Using file and folder permissions have historically provided a degree of control over who can access what documents within our business. However, a constant concern is how we protect data, such as documents and emails, when they leave our internal file servers and SharePoint sites. Consider these scenarios:

• A user accesses a sensitive HR document and sends that document from their work email to their personal email, or to a person outside of the organisation.
• This document has now left your organisation and your control over it has now ceased.

Using Azure Information Protection labelling, Circle Cloud create labels for the various sensitivity of documents within your organisation. When applied, these labels apply security policies to the document that can’t be removed, controlling who can access the document, even when the document has left your organisation.