Zero Trust Architecture and Office 365

If you are not thinking about leveraging Zero Trust principles when connecting to the Office 365 cloud, you should be.

The industry and customer shift from traditional on-premises application delivery to the cloud as well as the rapidly growing consumption of SaaS services has inverted network and security paradigms, shifting the focal point to the identity, device, application and data, and away from relying solely on traditional network perimeters, which are becoming less effective in reasoning and securing rich and complex application scenarios. Extending legacy network perimeter architectures into the cloud is becoming impractical, requiring customers to transform network and security architectures for the needs of the cloud.  Such transformation is captured in the Zero Trust Architecture models that are being adopted by the private industry (Implementing a Zero Trust security model at Microsoft) and DoD (The Road to Zero Trust (Security)).

Office 365 incorporates Zero Trust principles in its internal service design and operations as well as allows customers to natively achieve Zero Trust outcomes in consuming the service by taking advantage of built-in features which apply continuous validations across identity, device, service, and data layers.  This allows customers to achieve the same or better security outcomes with Office 365 natively, compared to security outcomes that are achievable with legacy network perimeter controls.  Implementing Zero Trust principles allow customers to modernize and in many cases simplify their network perimeter dependencies, particular for Office 365 application experiences and use a more differentiated and scaled-out connectivity approach. This shortens the network distance between the user and Office 365, reduces processing overhead at the enterprise network perimeter, thus improving user experience.

Highly recommend reading the following.
The Road to Zero Trust (Security)
Implementing a Zero Trust security model at Microsoft

Which Office 365 Gov Cloud Should I use???

I get lots of questions on which cloud is right for me?  Specifically there are Office 365 GCC, GCCH and DoD.  A colleague of mine wrote this really good article to help you with this - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Public-Sector-Blog/Understanding-Compliance-Between-Microsoft-365-Commercial-GCC/ba-p/718445


It goes through all the standards and accreditations and will help you make the right decision on which cloud to go to.

Office 365 Data Destruction

I have received a lot of questions lately about deletion of data from Office 365.  Different industries have requirements to remove data, and they need to be ensured that all of their content is deleted.  Sometimes the US Government will call this Data Spill remediation.
The following are the best articles you should review:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/Enterprise/office-365-data-retention-deletion-and-destruction-overview
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/Enterprise/office-365-data-destruction
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/Enterprise/office-365-data-immutability
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/Enterprise/office-365-exchange-online-data-deletion
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/Enterprise/office-365-sharepoint-online-data-deletion
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/Enterprise/office-365-skype-data-deletion

Audio Conferencing via Direct Routing for Office 365 GCCH and DoD

We had several customers waiting for Audio Conferencing with direct routing to be released in Office 365 GCCH and DoD.  I was recently announced in our roadmap.


“Audio Conferencing via Direct Routing for GCC High and GCC DoD enables participants to join your organization’s meetings using a standard phone number. Participants choose to use a phone to join meetings for scenarios where Internet connectivity is limited, are in transit, or don't have access to a Teams application. Participants can join the meeting either by using the dial-in access numbers of your organization or by having the meeting dial out to a phone number. Configuring this feature requires your organization to use its own numbers for dial-in access and all meeting dial-outs to phones are via Direct Routing. To enable the service, organizations need to set up Direct Routing and configure phone numbers that can be used for dial-in access. GCC High and DoD customers should note that the requirement to use direct routing is different from the Audio Conferencing service that is offered to commercial organizations where the dial-in access numbers are provided by Microsoft. Please be sure to review the correct documentation for this offering. We expect the documentation to be available at the same time as General Availability for the feature.”

Skype for Business Online Retirement

There was an important announcement that Skype for Business Online will be retired on July 31, 2021.  The Skype consumer service and Skype for Business Server are no associated to this announcement.

Microsoft Teams will be the service moving forward that is replacing Skype for Business Online.  Customers should start planning now on this transition.  Please review the announcement for getting details for that planning.

Announcement - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Skype-for-Business-Online-to-Be-Retired-in-2021/ba-p/777833.

Office 365 ProPlus Activation Improvements

There is are interesting improvements coming out for Office 365 ProPlus.  As many of you know, users can install ProPlus on 5 devices.  Today when they exceed that a user, is prompted and the user is forced to make a decision on which other device to deactivate ProPlus on.

Now the users can install ProPlus on new devices without getting prompted.  Now when the user reaches their sign-in limit, the user will be automatically signed out of ProPlus on the least used device.  Next time the user goes back to that device, they will be prompted to re-activate.

Announcement - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Office-365-Client-Licensing-and-Activation-Improvements/ba-p/763694

Microsoft Teams and Information Barriers

A feature that I have always been fascinated with is Information Barriers and it has been expanded to Microsoft Teams (in Preview).

Information Barriers is a feature of Office 365 that can be used to restrict conversation and communications between groups of people to avoid conflicts of interest.

For Microsoft Teams this means:

• Adding users to a Team could be restricted
• Private chats can be restricted
• Inviting other users to meetings
• Performing screenshare between users
• Placing a phone call between users

Here are some references:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/Information-Barriers-Preview/ba-p/505536

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/information-barriers-in-teams

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/securitycompliance/information-barriers