Preface
Over the course of my 25+ years in the information technology and security fields, I have had the opportunity to support many organizations with varying security budgets. One common observation I’ve made is the tendency for security strategies to rely on a single set of isolated security technologies. This approach often overlooks the most vulnerable areas, including email clients such as Outlook, document processing software such as Word, and even messaging applications such as Teams.
Unfortunately, even organizations with substantial security budgets lack a focused security strategy that addresses real-world attacks. As a result, many of these organizations experience breaches, some of which go unnoticed until their entire environment is compromised. It’s a recurring theme in the news, with major companies from the Global 500 reporting significant breaches, facing hefty fines, and losing customer trust.
Sometimes, a breach can be as simple as an employee accidentally clicking on a link in an email while trying to assist someone, leading to the infection of internal corporate systems. The aftermath of such incidents involves not only lost business but also extensive damage control, including costly investigations and recovery processes that can run into millions of dollars.
The absence of an integrated and focused security strategy results in a lack of proactive and effective protection. Consequently, organizations are forced to resort to incident response and containment measures once a breach occurs. Recognizing this issue, Microsoft, a leader in software, cloud, and security, has developed Defender for Office 365. This set of security tools is specifically designed to safeguard the everyday tools that end users interact with.
In this book, I aim to provide you with not only a comprehensive understanding of the threats you need protection from but also insights into how Defender for Office 365 operates, as well as how you can leverage it to ensure your organization doesn’t fall victim to poor productivity tool security.
