One of the ways businesses comply with industry regulations is by protecting sensitive data and preventing their unintentional disclosure. Some examples of sensitive information you might need to keep from being leaked outside your company would be financial data, health records, social security numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.
Having a data loss prevention (DLP) policy in place using Microsoft Office 365 allows you to constantly monitor, identify, and automatically safeguard information across the entire Office platform.
What’s in a DLP Policy
Here are a few basic things you can expect from a DLP policy.
- Locations where you can protect content, which include OneDrive, SharePoint Online, and Exchange Online.
- Rules about when and how to protect your content. These rules are composed of:
2.a. Conditions that should be matched by the content before a rule is enforced.
Example: You can limit your search to content that contains credit card numbers that have been shared with people outside your company.
2.b. Actions that should be taken automatically once the system finds content that matches the condition
Example: You have the option of blocking access to the document and email notification to both the compliance officer and user.
Advantages of a Microsoft Office 365 DLP Policy
1. Teach users to remain compliant without causing a workflow disruption.
It’s much easier to educate users concerning DLP policies and help them stay compliant without having to block their activity. For instance, a user who tries to share a document with sensitive information will receive an email notification and a policy tip in the document library. This allows them to easily override the policy if they can justify their activity with a business-related request.
2. View DLP reports with content matching the DLP policies of your firm.
For an easier assessment of your organization’s compliance with the Microsoft Office 365 DLP policy, you can check the number of matches each rule and policy has over time. You can also see what users have reported if a DLP policy lets one user override a policy tip or even report a false positive in the system.
3. Stop users from accidentally sharing sensitive details.
An example of this is when a document containing a health record is shared with people who are not in your company. You can identify the leak right away and automatically block the email from being delivered or block user access to the specific document.
4. Use desktop versions of Excel, Word, and PowerPoint 2016 to protect and monitor sensitive data.
Similar to how things are done in Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business, these 2016 programs can identify sensitive data and apply important DLP policies. Microsoft Office 365 DLP continues to monitor user activity when people share content using these Office platforms.
Although it’s important for any DLP tool to have complete capabilities and features, it’s also important to choose a service that is easy to manage and deploy. Microsoft Office 365’s DLP makes sure that all of your businesses’ sensitive information is safe at all times, making it the best policy out there.
