Microsoft has been very busy building out their brand under 365 Suite of online services. They are adding so much that it is hard to keep up. You have likely noticed that there is a distinct set of E3 and E5 offerings with acronyms to confuse you further. You have also likely noticed that Microsoft would prefer it if you adopted the Office 365 E5 offerings today. Let’s dig into one piece of the Office 365 E5 Suite, Office 365 Advanced Compliance.
Related: Dive into Software: New Microsoft 365 Changes
Office 365 Advanced Compliance is one of the differentiating features of Office 365 E5 in comparison to Office 365 E3, but what value does it offer? This package of online services can also be purchased a la carte if preferred. There is distinct value that can be derived from this Suite that could benefit those industries with strict regulations and restrictions.
Office 365 Advanced Compliance offers additional security measures through Customer Lockbox, which requires two levels of approval for your data to even be accessed by Microsoft. Microsoft cannot access your data unless they get permission from a Microsoft support manager, and then they need to request permission from the designated customer contact. Only then is Microsoft allowed to access your data. You could have a break fix need, and Microsoft would not be able to help you until these approvals are obtained. The feature needs to be enabled as it is disabled by default, and permission to access the data expires after twelve hours. You will know when Microsoft is accessing your data with this feature.
You can bring your own encryption keys to have your data encrypted at rest in Microsoft data centers. There is a Compliance Manager view to look at the entire organization to make sure that the policies instituted are being followed through real time auditing for analysis and corrective action. Furthermore, there is a feature added into this suite of online services that allows your company to surveil your employees. You can monitor email communications and even third-party streams like Facebook or Twitter. You may already have a tool to monitor your employees, but could this offer cost avoidance? You may already be interested in other features of Office 365 E5. Could this provide additional support for the decision to adopt the higher level of online services?
Advanced eDiscovery is very powerful and could save your company a substantial amount of time. Gone are the days of having to read hard copy documents. Gone are the days of having to read each individual electronic document as well. This tool is so powerful in that it will continue to become more agile as you use it. Your organization likely maintains many different data sources of unstructured content. You can use the import service within Office 365 Advanced Compliance to bring together many different content sources for powerful searching capabilities. Advanced eDiscovery will search multiple data sources and provide relevant results based on the search. It will employ optical character recognition for content within pictures and analyze email threads to recognize near duplicate content. You can tag individual documents with key words to enhance future search results as well. What may have taken weeks or months in the past can be significantly condensed. This will reduce the amount of time and documentation needed to be reviewed during discovery. The reduction in time and resources equates to real savings of money.
Connection is ready to have a conversation with your organization about any of your Microsoft needs. We have cloud specialists, software consultants, licensing specialists, concierge services, asset management specialists, and the best solutions sales consultants in the industry. We would be delighted to have the opportunity to speak with your company and assist with your transformation in this fast-moving environment.
Dan Ortiz
With over twenty years of experience in the software industry, Dan began his career as a technical sales specialist, concentrating on mobile device form factor aggregation. Currently, he leads Connection’s Digital Workspace Center of Excellence, where he is dedicated to bringing innovative new solutions and services to market to best serve customer needs. Dan has held various presales roles, where he excelled at identifying strategic initiatives with customers and turning them into reality, always considering both long- and short-term goals with a phased approach. For the past decade, his focus has been on cloud-based transformation, helping customers revolutionize their business practices. He has led presales teams specializing in Multi-cloud and Digital Workspace solutions. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time outdoors hiking, kayaking, and engaging in physically challenging adventures.
