How to keep your Microsoft 365 environment secure and up-to-date

But despite the fact that Microsoft 365 is literally built for evergreen IT and data-driven ways of working, many people only use a fraction of the platform's capabilities. It's time to change that.

So how do you achieve Evergreen IT with Microsoft 365 in practice?

Evergreen IT - how it works

In the past, many companies got by despite a growing 'technology debt' that they tried to pay off with a major upgrade project (at best) every three years. Today, this is no longer a sustainable strategy. Digital tools are not being used effectively, production is falling and employees are falling behind in their skills development. And with each passing month, the company accumulates more active security threats, which sooner or later lead to incidents.

To get out of this situation, it is important to understand what Microsoft 365 does and enables. The administrator of the platform can monitor the state of the company's IT environment via dashboards. They always show the status of the company:

• Security
• Regulatory compliance
• Productivity
• Climate footprint
• Network performance

With the exception of carbon footprint, each area is continuously assigned a "score" from 0 to 100 percent, from red to green. The goal should be to at least stay above 60 percent, the threshold for what Microsoft classifies as green - an IT environment in line with Microsoft 365.

Microsoft 365 tells you how you can do this. In terms of security, you may receive a notification to turn on a client's firewall or activate a feature. If someone has violated a security policy, you will receive an alert. The system keeps track of what users do, how they comply with the rules set and can give them reminders when needed. It monitors the company's compliance by keeping track of changes in regulations such as GDPR or ISO and adapting its advice accordingly.

The platform compares how employees use the platform with what has been shown to be best practice. If we look at productivity, for example, it has been shown that Teams is well suited for multi-person collaboration, while email is more suited for external communication. This allows Microsoft 365 to identify opportunities for improvement, such as suggesting appropriate training in Teams. Another common improvement is to record seminars and presentations so that more people can take part in them. Or teaching employees how to use Microsoft Office on their phones.

Bottlenecks in workflows are detected, such as the speed of loading files from home, so that misconfigured networks can be fixed.

By addressing needs as they arise, you keep your IT environment - and your users - in good shape. And you know the money is being spent on improvements that are really needed.

You'll also get reports that show how your company is doing in real numbers. This can come in handy if your IT department needs to prove its reliability to Microsoft or justify an investment in security.

Here's what you need to do

Even though a large part of the updates and suggestions are automatic in the platform, a continuous maintenance effort is required. Someone needs to keep an eye on the dashboards, decide which recommendations to follow and which deficiencies to fix. A flesh-and-blood human being should take actions such as taking care of alarms in time, activating features and setting rules for users.

The more often you do this, the more in tune your IT environment is with the platform and the better it - and your business - performs. To do this, you need IT staff with up-to-date skills in security, productivity, compliance and networking. It can be difficult to find a single person who knows all these areas well enough, often you need more than one person to cover them.

One possibility is to get help.

Microsoft 365 Evergreen is the key to a secure and up-to-date IT environment

We have a security team that keeps businesses signed up to the Microsoft 365 Evergreen service IT secure by monitoring, making recommendations, and implementing actions on an ongoing basis. Our compliance team ensures that businesses comply with laws and regulations and our productivity team helps users become more efficient. We take care of your administration and update you monthly on new regulations, security risks, releases and products.

You benefit from both Microsoft's and our collective experience from a large number of business users, who are constantly up-to-date with the latest technologies, trends and security risks.

Go and check the scores of your company:

• Security https://security .microsoft.com/securescore?viewid=overview
• Productivity https://admin.microsoft.com/Adminportal/Home#/productivity score
• Compliance https://compliance .microsoft.com/compliancemanager?viewid=overview

If you can't access them via the link, ask your IT manager or your IT provider to get the values. If it doesn't look green, make an action plan for Evergreen IT - or get in touch with us!

Read more here: Evergreen IT keeps your cloud platform in shape