How to make Microsoft 365 cloud governance a success

Introduction

In a business that operates in the cloud, employees use Microsoft 365 for collaboration, data storage, data recovery, and applications every day. Enterprises can even develop their own code, software or applications and deploy them to the cloud conveniently. However, such programs when uploaded by different departments of an organization may fail to communicate due to various reasons apart from any technical glitches.

Microsoft 365 infrastructure is highly secured and resilient against cyberattacks, however, assets deployed to the cloud may create issues by having poor configuration or access controls and it can be affected by people inadvertently having the access they should not have, thereby, posing risks of infiltration by hackers. Eventually, this leads to an increase in costs, reduction in efficiency, and heightened security concerns.

Hence, it is imperative to develop policies for cloud security using governance. In a nutshell, cloud governance is the enforcement of a set of rules and protocols in a business environment to eliminate security risks to enhance efficiency and ensure a smooth operation.

In this blog, let us further explore how to plan and implement the best cloud governance framework for Microsoft 365 in your organization.

Moving to the next step

Setting up cloud governance is an exigent process and hence can’t be rushed. Before getting off the ground, there are certain questions that need to be answered:

1. Do you have specialists to develop your own cloud governance plan or need a consultant?

2. Which assets you currently have in the cloud and which ones will you be deploying in the future?

3. Which security policies can govern your Microsoft 365 environment?

4. How will you manage data, access control, security groups, and encryption keys?

5. What will be audits and compliance requirements for the plan?

6. Who will be responsible for creating, maintaining, and monitoring of the cloud architecture?

7. How often will your cloud teams coordinate to keep the cloud environment responsive and free from violation?

Steps to establish cloud governance

Now, let us discuss the key steps necessary to implement Microsoft 365 governance correctly as per your business requirements –

• Content creation and management – It is a process that defines workflows via a set of rules and naming policies based on standard and custom blocked words and enables assigning an organization-specific classification to the content.
• Content approval – It is a process where any changes or updates in existing architecture around content need the approval to prevent issues like content compartmentalization, loss of content or its outgrowth.
• Access management – It is a process to configure access rights to prevent content misuse and also to imply policies to control external user access to the environment and its resources.
• Content lifecycle management – It is a process that defines expiration policies to avoid content sprawl such as by auto-archival of inactive content.
• Enhanced security – It is a process to establish additional security such as revoking the access of externally shared content for security reasons.
• Tracking and monitoring – It is a process to gain smart insights on content usage and activities through actionable reports.

TeamsHub by Cyclotron and Cloud Governance Automation

If you are looking forward to using cloud governance software, TeamsHub by Cyclotron is here to help you lead the charge. Built to extend and automate Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365, TeamsHub by Cyclotron provides a consistent architecture for your tenant in the cloud and clear visibility on all your cloud activity leveraging the power of automation. TeamsHub by Cyclotron eradicates complexities of administration and tons of manual provisioning issues rejuvenating your collaboration experience for improved business operations.

Where an ordinary cloud governance solution may help you optimize your assets and monitor compliance manually, TeamsHub by Cyclotron can be easily configured to send automatic notifications or alert messages about the critical events that take place in the tenant and terminate them automatically if parameters applied mismatch governance rules.

Furthermore, TeamsHub by Cyclotron automates Microsoft 365 governance that includes MS Teams, SharePoint, Yammer and other workloads in one platform to provide you a comprehensive cloud governance solution to eliminate all hurdles on productivity.

If you want to learn more about TeamsHub by Cyclotron, please visit https://teamshub.io or contact sales@cyclotrongroup.com to request a demo