Does your business use Office 365? Have you heard of their Secure Score tool?
The suite of apps and cloud services available through an Office 365 subscription has been a game changer for many businesses. Office 365 allows companies to scale their software use to reflect the growth of their business. And because Microsoft pushes updates to the software behind the scenes, users always have access to the latest version.
Businesses subscribing to the Office 365 suite of apps can now improve their online security through their Secure Score tool. The data provided by this tool can help to lower the cost of cyber security insurance.
Secure Score
Early in 2016, Microsoft began quietly examining the host of in-app security measures in use by businesses subscribing to the Office 365 suite of apps. The data collected from this endeavor became the foundation of Secure Score, which debuted during the latter half of 2016.
There are nearly 80 security factors in Office 365, and the Secure Score tool evaluates each of them to arrive at a score. Much like your credit score describes your credit risk, Secure Score provides a score value for your security risk.
Instead of labeling findings along a low-moderate-critical scale, the tool provides an assessment of overall security that allows you to evaluate your risk. Addressing risk in this way lets you make incremental changes over time, mitigating risk more effectively.
Please note, however, that Secure Score does not analyze security for any outside services you may be using. If you are addressing risk through other platforms, your overall score may be lower in the Secure Score report. This is where the evaluation of your score merits careful assessment.
How Your Online Security Can Affect Your Cyber Insurance Rates
Cyber security has become an ever-growing sector in the insurance business, particularly as it relates to commerce. Data breaches, denial-of-service attacks, and data disasters all have the potential to affect the productivity and profitability of any business. Insurers have long recognized the intersection of data security and business viability when it comes to insuring businesses.
Following the debut of Secure Score, The Hartford Financial Services Group announced plans to use the score reported by the tool to help determine premiums for their cyberinsurance products. It is only a matter of time before other insurers follow this path. Microsoft’s Secure Score tool gives businesses and insurers alike a quantifiable measure of security within Office 365.
Want to know your business’ security score? If you have admin permissions for your company’s Office 365 Business Premium or Enterprise subscription, you can access the tool here. If you don’t know what any of this means but you want to learn more, contact our Office 365 experts.