This article was contributed by Andrei Iunisov, who works as a digital marketing expert at Iunisov.
Data security has long since become one of the most important tasks for any tech company. The existing variety of environment types and storage options greatly expands the difficulty of creating a competent security system without substantial drawbacks.
Even cloud environments such as Microsoft 365 have their own share of security challenges and other concerns when it comes to protecting valuable information. Luckily, there are also multiple ways to safeguard information in such environments by using modern technologies such as Attribute-Based Access Control or Sensitivity Labels.
ABAC represents a sophisticated access control method that uses attributes as the primary means of understanding whether to allow or deny access to specific information. It is far more suitable for modern security challenges that can rarely be stopped by traditional “perimeter-based” security systems, which protect the entire environment from outside influence at the same time.
Attribute Based Access Control in Microsoft 365 is a drastic change from the older RBAC security approach, which used custom roles as the means of assigning permissions and capabilities to each user. Such methodology had its own advantages but was completely open to many potential exploits, from impersonation to malicious ex-employees.
The ability of ABAC to provide much more granular control over case-specific user permissions has given it with a lot of popularity in recent years. It uses what is called fine-grained access control, which performs authentication for every single user interaction based on several attributes at once instead of just one. These attributes include, but are not exclusive to, name, country, group, security clearance, address, classification, sensitivity level, data type, and so on.
The ability to adjust these policies and add new ones when necessary is also a massive advantage that greatly helps large and complex companies control their security posture without being overwhelmed by the sheer volume and scope of the system.
Modern complex business infrastructures also prefer ABAC because of its extensive scalability, which is extremely convenient for growing companies and requires fewer actions to be taken when it comes to introducing new employees to the environment. It is also an exceptional option for various compliance and regulatory matters, making it possible to restrict access to specific information purely on a need-to-know basis.
Another noteworthy security measure in the context of Microsoft 365 is Sensitivity Labeling – the process of assigning sensitive data with dedicated labels that can be used to understand what security measures have to be applied to it.
Microsoft itself provides such a feature – Office 365 Enterprise E3 license owners or above can configure sensitivity labels for their environments (both manually and automatically). It is called MPIP (Microsoft Purview Information Protection), and it can offer persistent sensitivity labels that remain attached to the content after it has been moved, the ability for third-party apps to interact with labels, and support for custom classification in certain situations.
Sensitivity labeling can be applicable to many different environments and situations, including:
- Container management, be it Microsoft 365 Groups, SharePoint sites, Teams, etc.
- Labels for auditing and reporting, identifying the sensitivity label for specific data.
- Content markings and watermarks, such as simple “confidential” watermarks or similar, as well as headers and footers.
- Encryption enforcement, preventing unauthorized users from accessing specific content.
- Security for meetings and chats, mostly applicable to Teams, making it possible to label and encrypt invites or responses from group chats.
- Protect data in specific services and applications – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Salesforce, Dropbox, and more.
Yet, Microsoft’s version of this feature (MPIP) has a number of severe limitations that all users should be aware of. All of the digital signatures become null and void after the MPIP label is applied since the application process breaks the file’s integrity. Additionally, MPIP is unsuitable for defense and government organizations since it does not allow for the augmentation of out-of-the-box labels for specific purposes (such as compliance, security, or government requirements).
In this context, using third-party solutions for Microsoft 365 Sensitivity Labels seems like the best option, considering how much more flexible and versatile these solutions can be – with unlimited label control, extensive multi-label classification that MPIP does not support, strong encryption at rest, and in motion, user-based watermarking, and even security for files outside of the Microsoft environment – such as PDF, CAD, HTML, text, image, and many others.
Sensitivity labels can also act as one of many attributes in ABAC that restrict access to specific data, be it for general security or compliance reasons. There are multiple examples of third-party security solutions for Microsoft 365 that offer extensive ABAC capabilities with support for thorough and varied sensitivity labeling.
The market for data security software has always been highly competitive and varied. The recent rise of cybercriminal activities and data breaches only made this market even more competitive and diverse, so the biggest security challenge for resolving your Microsoft 365 security concerns would be to pick one of these solutions that fits your company the most.
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Last Updated on September 20, 2024 1:37 pm CEST
