Top Office 365 Risks to Lookout for in Finance

Your customers expect that their financial data is safe, secure, and available to them at any time. With your company adopting the cloud to deliver on this always-on mentality, there are some additional risks that need to be accounted for. Discover what your biggest risks are and how to protect your financial organization from losing important data and long-term customers.

Lost Customer Data

Simple employee error is the top reason for customer file loss. Even if your SecOps team is diligent in training employees on best practices, mistakes happen. Mistakes that result in losing customer data are not only embarrassing, they create expensive disruptions in your operations, scar your brand for years, or cost you your job.

Equifax is still making headlines in all the wrong ways from their 2017 data security faux pas, where 147.9 million people were affected by personal data casualties. When you hold personal financial information for millions of customers, you need a security plan that surpasses Office 365’s meager data retention plan. You need to be certain, beyond a doubt, that you are following financial industry data security protocol for your customers and your organization’s continued success.

Critical Files Corrupted

Last year the Petya attack on France’s BNP Paribas blocked employee computer access and interrupted operations at the real estate division of the large financial institution. Malware and ransomware attacks on financial institutions are increasing every year and becoming more sophisticated, increasing the risk of critical file corruption in your organization.

Corrupted files stored in Office 365 are not protected by Microsoft should corruption happen or accidental deletion past a certain timeframe. You are still solely responsible for minimizing financial sector data risks. Backing up data in a trusted third-party location, securing a file restoration and corruption-detection method, and using the most advanced data security available are all still best practices, even in the cloud.

Unauthorized Transactions and Activity

Malicious activity can be perpetrated by hackers or disgruntled employees. Just as Microsoft doesn’t guarantee corrupted files will be available again, Office 365 data is not protected from data damage resulting from malicious activity. Your customer files could be sold, your internal files maliciously attacked, and the integrity of your financial institution called into question if you don’t take the necessary steps to protect the critical financial data.  

Ensure Operations Uptime

Office 365 makes sense for financial institutions. It provides an easy and secure way to share data and create better communication across branches and departments for streamlined business operation. However, the risks of storing your data in Office 365 are real, and the threats to your data are severe. Follow these tips for financial sector data security to prove due diligence in sensitive data protection:

SOC 2 Type II Audit

SOC 2 Type II is the highest security protection for your data. Don’t settle for data protection that is weaker than this for customer financial and personal data. Your company is held responsible for data protection, so hold your data backup solution to the same standard.

Recover Lost Files

Losing files is horrible, but restoring a secondary version is not much better. Data backup solutions like Backupify let you restore all file versions so you can get the critical information you need. Emails, contacts, files, and folders can all be searched and rescued with the right backup solution.

Keep Data Available and Safe

You should be able to search and find the files you need while keeping customer data safe. Office 365 allows you to turn encryption on and off, which puts a lot of power in the users’ hands. Use a backup solution with rest and transit encryption to ensure data protection and search features for availability. There’s a better world for data protection that doesn’t add risks to data access.