by Steve Galloway | Nov 25, 2014
Office 365 Message Encryption is an easy-to-use service that lets email users send encrypted messages to people inside or outside their organization. Designated recipients can easily view their encrypted messages and return encrypted replies. Regardless of the destination email service—whether it’s Outlook.com, Yahoo, Gmail, or another service—email users can send confidential business communications with an added level of protection against unauthorized access.
There are many scenarios in which email message encryption might be required, including:
- A bank employee sending credit card statements to customers
- An insurance company representative providing policy details to customers
- A mortgage broker requesting financial information from a customer for a loan application
- A health care provider sending health care information to patients
- An attorney sending confidential information to a customer or another attorney
- A consultant sending a contract to a customer
Exchange Online and Exchange Online Protection (EOP) administrators set up Office 365 Message Encryption by defining encryption rules. ComStat engineers can help customers with subscribed support service customize encrypted messages with organizational text and logo, presenting a company brand that’s familiar to message recipients.
Additionally, Exchange provides advanced services for high level encryption services like certificated TLS etc. The diagram below showing the workflow through which Office 365 Message Encryption protects encrypted emails from being read by unauthorized users, while allowing straightforward access by authorized recipients.
by Steve Galloway | Nov 25, 2014
In-Place Archiving eliminates the need for Outlook personal store (.pst) files and allows users to store historical messages in an archive mailbox accessible in Microsoft Outlook 2010 and later and Microsoft Office Outlook Web App.
In Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, In-Place Archiving provides users with an alternate storage location in which to store historical messaging data. An In-Place Archive is an additional mailbox (called an archive mailbox) enabled for a mailbox user. Outlook 2007 and later and Outlook Web App users have seamless access to their archive mailbox. Using either of these client applications, users can view an archive mailbox and move or copy messages between their primary mailbox and the archive. In-Place Archiving presents a consistent view of messaging data to users and eliminates the user overhead required to manage .pst files.
You can provision a user’s archive on the same mailbox database as the user’s primary mailbox, another mailbox database on the same Mailbox server, or a mailbox database on another Mailbox server in the same Active Directory site. This provides flexibility to use tiered storage architecture and to store archive mailboxes on a different storage subsystem, such as near-line storage. In cross-premises Exchange 2010 and later deployments, you can also provision a cloud-based archive for mailboxes located on your on-premises Mailbox servers.
by Admin | Nov 25, 2014
There is a growing inventory of Microsoft and third party apps for integration into Outlook Web App and Outlook for desktop, ranging from in-line adress detection and mapping/directions to email routing analysis and routing.
Organisations face increasing risks to data leakage. Data leakage happens when organisations allow data about their customers or even their own organisation to “leak” into the public domain, quite often unwittingly. For instance, employees who have mobile phones to connect to Exchange services can sometimes download third party apps which assume access rights to information an organisation holds which isneverthless prohibited under data protection laws.
Among tools available to ComStat’s engineers to help educate users and organisations alike, our network administrators are able to define policies for organisations which manage availability and distribution of apps to users who have access to organisational services.
by Steve Galloway | Nov 25, 2014
Microsoft Exchange and Office 365 are cloud based services which can be accessed from Microsoft’s braowser based OWA application. Outlook for desktop continues plays an important for users who want to manage email, calendars, and even OneDrive and Sharepoint services. This capability is really the domain of the power user, however Hosted Exchange connects to Outlook 2007, 2010, and 2013, and Office 365 users can download Microsoft’s most current version of Outlook 2013 for desktop as part of their subscription service.
by Steve Galloway | Nov 25, 2014
As users distribute more content to multiple mobile devices, issues of data leakage, data privacy, and data protection become increasingly important. Microsoft Exchange can cope with connectivity to a maximum of 5 devices per user, so the number of devices exposing an organisation to liability under data protection laws extend far beyond the number of an organisation’s “on-premise” workstations.
In the event of a lost mobile phone, laptop, or tablet which contains your customers’ personal data by way of contact information, emails, and/or documents, it is not enough to ask a mbile phone supplier to stop a SIM card – many smartphones can continue to connect to cloud services wirelessly to access organizational information and contact information even after disconnection from telco services.
ComStat is an authorised Microsoft Clour Partner, and is additionally authorised as a qualified network administrator. This means our engineers have a thorough working knowledge of advanced Microsoft Exchange and Office 365 technologies to help organisations subscribing to our supported services to deal rapidly with “won’t happen to me” events like lost mobile phones so that policies can be established to configure devices by brand, model, or individual, invoke keypad security, and restrict or wipe organisational data in the event of loss, including overseas travel.
by Steve Galloway | Nov 24, 2014
Microsoft Outlook Web App (or Outlook Web Access) is a browser-based email client. Outlook Web App (OWA) lets users access their Microsoft Exchange Server mailbox from almost any web browser. The tools has proven immensely popular, and in some cases organisations forego the deployment of desktop versions of Outlook in favour of OWA’s clean and intuitive presentation.
Additionally, OWA connects you to your contacts, calendars, tasks, and Office 365 tools like Sharepoint, Word online, Excel online etc., and other management facilities for handling your Office 365 accounts. Depending on user rights, some users have access to advanced services which permit network administration of in-house and third party installations.
