8 Microsoft Teams Tools to Boost Government Computer Security
It’s easy to see why government computer security is critical. State and local governments and contractors deal with an extraordinary amount of data that has to be protected. Still, a significant amount of government computer security isn’t up to par, and simply hasn’t been updated with modern standards. Microsoft Teams is one suite of solutions that can help.
Let’s take a look at some of the features for cybersecurity state and local government entities can take advantage of in the Microsoft Teams platform.
Advanced Threat Protection
Employee errors are, by far, the biggest threat to any organization — not just government organizations. Advanced Threat Protection is able to detect actions by users that could inadvertently cause harm.
1. Advanced Threat Protection
The ATP system scans content to identify potential threats. Part of the ATP system is the “Safe Links” system, which identifies potentially harmful links; at time of writing, this is not yet available in MS Teams, but will be coming. Otherwise, the ATP system will be able to automatically detect threats throughout MS Teams and Office 365, and act according to its configuration once threats are discovered.
2. Safe Attachments
Safe Attachments scans attachments so that users don’t potentially open something malicious. Many users will automatically click on attachments, especially if they are expecting something from the email address in question; this could compromise the entirety of the system.
System Audits
Government organizations regularly find themselves facing changes in best practices and compliance. For state and local governments, this can be difficult to meet, as it requires a lot of time to manage these changes. System audits using MS Teams can make it easier.
3. The Microsoft Security Score
This score is a gauge that an organization can use to identify whether they have security flaws, and how well-protected they are overall. While not comprehensive, the Microsoft Security Score will at least show whether security is being improved or if it’s being reduced.
4. The Microsoft 365 Compliance Center
The compliance center can be used to determine whether the organization is in compliance, depending on the organization’s compliance needs. This can be an easy-to-use dashboard for organizations to determine what further actions they need to take to be in compliance. It integrates with the entirety of Microsoft 365 in addition to MS Teams, so it isn’t just a single system.
Data Protection
Government organizations deal with a lot of data that they have to protect. But most employees can’t be relied on to automatically protect all this data. It’s not that they are careless or that they don’t want to, it’s just a tremendous amount of data and often on a multitude of devices.
5. Information Barriers
MS Teams provides “information barriers,” through which employees who don’t need to interact with each other cannot interact with each other. This is very important for compliance on a government level, because it dramatically reduces the chances there could be information leaks, or that someone could gain access to accounts and data that they shouldn’t gain access to. It also makes it harder for a criminal attacker to get to the data they need.
6. Sensitivity Labels
Data can also be labeled as having higher levels of privacy or sensitivity, which makes it easier to protect critical data, while still being able to access data that might be important for day-to-day operations. Not all data has to be completely locked down (and locking down all data could make it prohibitively difficult to operate), but some data needs to have the highest levels of security. These labels can be further used to scan for and prevent the sending of particularly sensitive information such as social security numbers, so employees can’t accidentally include it in communications.
Legal Protection
Often, a government agency may experience a legal issue, and may need to hold documents or recover information. MS Teams provides built-in legal protection for this eventuality.
7. Legal Hold
Documents can be placed quickly on legal hold, particularly for a specific employee or customer. Now, these documents won’t be able to be deleted or otherwise tampered with, so they can be in compliance with any legal actions.
8. eDiscovery
Documents can also be tracked easily and otherwise have their metadata traced, so the system will show who has accessed them and who has otherwise modified them. These eDiscovery features make it easier for legal actions to go through because all the documents can be furnished right away.
Government organizations need to be able to rely upon their computer security. Many local and state governments are dealing with a tremendous amount of protected information on a government level, both from their employees and from citizens. With Microsoft Teams, government organizations can at least be assured that their communications and documents are being protected.
Want to implement MS Teams or the Microsoft Office 365 suite in your government organization? Contact the experts at Red River to find out more.
