Much more than just application upgrades, this package is a cybersecurity investment you want to make.
What is it?
Microsoft Business Premium combines email and applications with advanced security capabilities to help keep your business and data safe from advanced cyber threats, safeguard your data and manage devices.
Why is it important?
Following the adoption of remote and hybrid work structures and utilization of more cloud-based apps, your business needs a multi-layered approach to cybersecurity. Utilizing the tools available with a Microsoft Business Premium license provides businesses of any size with enterprise-grade technology to protect their data.
What does it include?
- Microsoft Apps Package including Publisher
- Email and calendaring
- 1TB available for file storage and sharing
- Anti-malware protection for emails with Microsoft Defender
- The Technical: Microsoft Defender is an anti-malware component of Windows. When activated for Office 365, Microsoft Defender helps guard against viruses, spam, unsafe attachments, suspicious links, and phishing attacks. Paired with an EDR like Sentinel One, it helps protect businesses from human errors that threaten cybersecurity.
- What you need to know: It’s a built-in spam filtering tool used to protect end-users from phishing attacks and cyber threats sent through email.
- Mobile Device Management with Microsoft Intune to protect your company’s sensitive data on employee- or company-owned devices
- The Technical: Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based unified endpoint management tool that helps organizations manage personal and company-owned devices, providing secure access to company data on those devices.
- What you need to know: Intune allows businesses to manage employee- and company-owned devices remotely (can wipe sensitive data from a device without having physical access to it).
- Microsoft Azure platform to help IT administrators manage security tools
- The Technical: Azure is a public cloud computing platform used for analytics, virtual computing, storage, networking, and much more. Azure can be used in conjunction with or as a replacement for your on-premise server.
- What you need to know: If you want to move to the cloud and remove your on-premise server, you need Business Premium and its Azure software to do so. One of the many pros of Azure is that it makes it easier for you to restrict what employees can and can’t do with or without company devices.
How to justify the cost?
While the added dollars signs to annual or monthly licensing costs may deter you from investing into a multi-layered cybersecurity approach like Business Premium, consider the alternatives.
IBM COST OF A DATA BREACH REPORT 2022
- 60% of businesses surveyed indicated they raised service and product rates as a result of a data breach. With rising costs from inflation, can your business handle additional raises because of a breach?
- Average cost of a data breach by industry. Where do you fit in?
- Hospitality: $2.94M
- Consumer: $3.86M
- Education: $3.86M
- Industrial: $4.47M
- Services: $4.7M
- Financial: $5.97M
- Higher breach costs can be associated with a remote workforce. Of the organizations surveyed, when 81-100% of the employees were remote, the average cost of a breach was $5.1M. For businesses with less than 20% working remote, the average cost dropped to $3.99M. If employee happiness surrounding remote work is crucial to your core values and business model, consider investing in added cybersecurity protection as an added preventative measure.