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Get more from Microsoft 365

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Created: Sunday, 16 January 2022
Written by Paul Grigg

Microsoft 365 (Office 365’s new name), is a swiss army knife, but we find that even if an organisation is using it, they only make use of one or two of its “tools”. This blog will give you an overview of the best features, the “tools” that enable them, and how they are useful.

Automation

Tool: Power Automate (previously known as Flow) Essentially you can use Power Automate to automate manual repetitive tasks. What you can achieve with it is a huge topic in itself, but here is just a small taster of what you could automate:
  • New starters
    • 4 weeks prior to start date - Send email to IT to create the account
    • On start date - Send email to new starter welcoming them
    • 1 week after start date - Send follow up email to new starter
  • Monitor Twitter for certain keywords and send an email or Teams message when one is detected
  • Notify a Team when a task is created, completed or updated
  • Approval workflows
    • Staff member places a document in a folder for approval
    • Approvers are automatically notified
    • They can either approve or reject
    • Document is moved to either an approved or rejected folder
  • Repetitive desktop application - Automate with “Power Automate Desktop”
    • Launch application
    • Enter information from another data source
    • Click buttons
    • Extract data to another data source
    • Close application
    • Repeat
    • etc

    Cloud Email, Contacts and Calendar

    Tool: Exchange Online If you’re already using Microsoft 365 chances are you are already using Exchange online. If not, this is the bit that handles your email, contacts and calendar. Some useful features are:
    • Share your inbox, calendar or contacts with colleagues
    • Sync email, contacts and calendar with your phone
    • Shared calendars e.g. for Meeting room bookings
    • Central contacts
    • Out of office
    • All available from within Outlook, mobile, or web browser

    Cloud file storage / file sharing

    Tools: OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams

    OneDrive and SharePoint might seem similar at first glance, but OneDrive is primarily for private file storage. Files in OneDrive are by default only accessible to you, but you can still share files/folders with other people. The best feature of OneDrive is the option to sync your Desktop, Documents and Pictures folders to it. Which keeps your documents safe and makes them accessible from anywhere.

    SharePoint is primarily for files that need to be shared within groups of multiple people. For example, you might have a SharePoint library for the Sales team, files you place in there would be accessible to everyone in the Sales team.

    Documents, spreadsheets and presentations placed in either OneDrive or SharePoint all support co-authoring, which is where multiple people can simultaneously work on the same file and you see their changes as they make them (similar to Google Docs if you’ve seen that in action).

    Teams is a useful frontend to access files within OneDrive or Sharepoint and can facilitate collaboration.

    Communication

    Tool: Teams

    Some useful communication features of Teams:

    • Create Teams and Channels based around how your organization operates
    • Post messages to Channels for discussion
    • Ad-hoc chat, call or video call with your colleagues and external contacts
    • Schedule and host online meetings
    • VOIP telephony

    Centralized management

    Tools: Azure Active Directory, Intune

    If you have no on-site servers then making use of Microsoft 365’s centralized management features are a no-brainer. All Microsoft 365 plans include the basic Azure Active Directory which you can “Join” devices to. Working on “Joined” devices gives you the following advantages:

    • Centralised logins - No need to create logins on each computer for each person, or share device passwords, just login with your own email address
    • Single Sign On - No prompts for passwords when accessing Microsoft 365 sites
    • Self service password reset
    • Backup Bitlocker keys (for disk encryption)

    Some plans include Intune already but it is available as an add-on to any plan. Intune enables you to:

    • Automatically push out apps to your devices - such as Office, Chrome, etc
    • Enforce security policies - such as password strength or screen locking
    • Control automatic updates
    • Automate device deployment
    • And more

    Intranet / knowledgebase

    Tool: SharePoint / Teams

    SharePoint isn't just for document storage, you can build an intranet (an intranet is a web site that is only accessible within your organization) to help your colleagues find the information they need quickly, keep them up to date on news, etc.

    Teams also has some limited functionality through the “wiki” app. You can create a simple knowledge base accessible within the Teams application. One important thing to note - anyone with access to the wiki will be able to edit it, either an upside or downside depending on your requirements.

    We have improved many of our customers return on investment by making better use of Microsoft 365. Whether that’s utilizing more of its features, or just tweaking it from the defaults to better fit their business. If you would like to discuss how we can help your organisation get more out of Microsoft 365 give us a call!

Compromised email accounts

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Created: Sunday, 09 January 2022
Written by Tim Nicholls

Over 1 million email accounts get compromised each month. In the past if your email account was compromised it was probably just used for sending spam, if you were a victim, you would just reset your password and forget about it. Nowadays hackers are more sophisticated and are looking for a bigger payoff. Below are several costly actions a hacker might carry out if they gained access to your or a colleague’s email account.

Change of bank account notification for salary payments

The hacker will email the person in your organization responsible for payroll with a change of bank account notification. Since the email is from your actual email account, not a forgery, they will not be able to tell it was sent by the hacker.

Change of bank account notification your customers

The hacker will email your customers with a change of bank account notification. Since the email is from your actual email account, not a forgery, your customers will not be able to tell it was sent by the hacker.

Intercept supplier invoice

The hacker will intercept a legitimate invoice from one of your suppliers and change the bank details to a bank account they control.

Other social engineering

The hacker will email your colleagues with attempts to get a further foothold within your organisation. Either malicious documents infected with malware or phishing to compromise more email accounts.

How can you protect yourself and your organization?

Multi Factor Authentication (MFA)

The best protection is to enforce MFA on all email accounts in your organization. Both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace have policies you can enable to force everyone to set it up.

Education

Most successful attacks involve human failure at some level. Make sure your staff are aware of the risks, understand how these attacks work, the warning signs, and who to report them to. The UK’s National Cyber Security Center has some free training that is quite good

Processes

Ensure your organization’s, suppliers’, and customers’ processes all include verifying any bank detail change via two independent methods.

Cyber Insurance

Recovering from a cyber incident could be ruinous to many organizations. Consider taking out cyber insurance to make sure you can get back on your feet.

Engage telanova as your IT team and we will advise you on appropriate security strategies for your organization and implement them.

Benefit 7 of 8: Designing, implementing and supporting new IT

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Created: Wednesday, 22 December 2021
Written by Paul Grigg

Benefit 7 of 8: We are experts at designing, implementing and supporting new IT systems. Some examples are:

IT for startups

A local startup had only 8 employees but had big growth plans for the future and needed their IT to keep up. We set up Google Workspace as their platform for email, document storage and collaboration. We trained them how to use it properly to its full potential and supported them in its use. We have solved many other IT challenges for them, such as specifying the right laptops to meet the needs of each staff member, scaling their office network, and implementing a VOIP phone system. 4 years later and they’ve grown to 50+ employees.

New branch offices

A kitchen designer wanted to expand into a new area by opening a showroom in a nearby town. They needed a secure link to their line of business application in their HQ, and also fast shared storage for CAD work as they would have in-house designers on site. We designed the new showroom network, expanded capacity on their back office HQ based servers, spec’d suitable PCs for their designers and other staff members and implemented the whole thing.

Document management systems

An accountant wanted to add a document management system as they were wasting too much time cataloging, storing, tracking and archiving important documents. After evaluating several different solutions they picked Virtual Cabinet. We analysed their budget, performance and estimated growth needs and specified an appropriate server. We installed the server, liaised with Virtual Cabinet to install the software, and rolled out the client software to all their devices.

Secure Wi-Fi for visitors

A parish council wanted to add secure guest WiFi for one of their halls. They especially wanted guests to agree to terms and conditions before being able to access the internet. We installed and configured a Unifi controller and access points at the hall. Guests connect to a special network which cannot access the internal parish council network and must also click an agree button before gaining access to the internet.

Cloud platforms

A school had purchased a new cloud SaaS application to manage some back office functions. Rather than having another set of usernames and passwords for this new SaaS app, we configured it to connect to their existing Microsoft 365 service for authentication.

Work from home solutions

We have implemented remote access solutions for every budget. From the low end - secure VPN and remote desktop to a PC in the office. To the high end - Remote desktop server farm with Duo multi factor authentication.

End-user devices like PCs, laptops etc

While everyone loves the speed of a brand new device, the downtime while swapping over is frustrating. That’s why our main aim when deploying new end-user devices is to make that downtime as small as possible. We accomplish in a few different ways

  1. Doing as much setup as possible in our own offices before visiting the customer’s site
  2. Setting up our customer’s systems in a way that facilitates easy transfer
  3. Leveraging automation tools wherever possible e.g. Autopilot, Intune, Group policies etc

What are your plans for the business next year? We'll solve your IT challenges.

Benefit 8 of 8: Improving IT

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Created: Monday, 03 January 2022
Written by Jonathan Hobson

Benefit 8 of 8: Improving IT

At telanova we don’t just accept the status quo - we look for ways to improve IT for our customers, with benefits such as:

  • Speed - streamline processes, eliminate bottlenecks. Customers get more work done in the same amount of time.
  • Reliability - Identify and remove the causes of downtime - Customers spend less time unable to work.
  • Security - reduce risk of data breaches, ransomware attacks etc. As well as systems to get organisations working again if cyber criminals strike.
  • Reduce costs
    • moving to the cloud, replacing servers that have high ongoing costs,
    • ensuring customers don’t buy more than they need.

Contact us to find out the great ways telanova will improve your business.

Benefit 6 of 8: IT Security

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Created: Monday, 13 December 2021
Written by Jonathan Hobson

One of our clients inadvertently clicked on a dodgy link - it didn’t seem to do anything and they got on with their day. However, it was designed to silently execute malware, undetected by regular anti-virus and maliciously encrypt the files on the entire system. Then issue a ransom demand.

However, our next-generation security monitoring alerted us to suspicious activity. We remotely isolated the computer from the network. We checked that this wasn’t a false positive. We rolled back the computer to a state before the incident completely removing the threat.

You can read our full blog on the advantages of next-gen antivirus here. But in summary, instead of relying on someone experiencing a virus or attack before - it monitors the behaviour of programs running on your device and takes action on anything suspicious. Not only will it flag the issue, but also quarantine and isolate the device from the network to stop the issue from spreading. It offers a roll-back function, to restore the device from a time before infection.

Anti-virus is only part of the security jigsaw - other security services we provide:

  • Managed and monitored device encryption - if a device is stolen you can be confident the data on it can not be accessed.
  • Managed and monitored authentication - we make sure passwords are strong, two- factor authentication is implemented and detect brute force password attacks.
  • Managed and monitored firewalls and network infrastructure - The devices we install are configured with security in mind - if you want a secure VPN into the office - we make sure this is implemented in the most secure way possible.
  • Managed and monitored patch management - the latest security updates will protect you from “zero-day” vulnerability that will allow hackers into your systems.

telanova manages and monitors our clients’ security and take prompt action when there is a potential issue. Many other IT providers do not.

Contact us to make sure your IT security is up to scratch

More Articles ...

  1. Benefit 5 of 8: IT maintenance
  2. Benefit 4 of 8: Monitoring IT equipment 24/7
  3. Benefit 3 of 8: IT consultancy that’s real-world advice, not corporate buzzwords.
  4. Benefit 2 of 8: access to our help desk
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