April 08, 2020 Security, Document Tracking and Sharing with AIP The world is witnessing a huge upswing in remote work amid the COVID-19 outbreak. One of the most important aspects in such a scenario is airtight security across an organization’s environment. TeamsHub by Cyclotron secures confidential data and prevents potential data breaches through enhanced governance using Information Rights Management (IRM), document tracking through Azure Information Protection (AIP) and external file sharing. Introduction TeamsHub by Cyclotron is an automated governance platform for Microsoft Teams. It saves IT departments overheads and provides secure operation continuity by integrating the best in class features from Azure and Office365. In this article, we explore the various aspects of security, document tracking, and sharing using AIP, IRM, and others. Microsoft has published an article intended for IT professionals yesterday. It provides important privacy and security aspects for Microsoft Teams. The full article is listed here. One particular section of interest in governance is preventing cybersecurity threats using various tools. Sensitivity labeling, cloud app security, data loss prevention, and advanced threat protection are some of them. Additionally, protecting identity and account access is another section of note in the article. As a matter of fact, TeamsHub by Cyclotron allows many ways to automate governance and protect data using AIP and IRM for security, document tracking, and sharing. This helps with security and compliance for Microsoft Teams. As a result, heavily regulated industries such as Banking, Finance, Insurance, Healthcare, and Lifesciences will find this especially useful. Let us take a look at some of them. Security: Sensitivity Labeling and Guest Access Automated governance features in TeamsHub by Cyclotron particularly provides a rich set of flexible features. Firstly, create a Team as either Private or Public. Information is now accessible to either a select or large section of users because of this setting. Private access allows for team members to collaborate without sharing information. Also, you can mark the Team as confidential or restricted. A public Team’s information is available to everyone. . Furthermore, in addition to Team visibility, guest access can also be configured. Security and Document Sharing: Information Rights Management (IRM) Our governance feature set provides IRM which systematically safeguards sensitive corporate data from possible leaks. Prevent unintended users from seeing, editing, downloading. sharing and printing documents. This depends on the setting of that document and auto-expires access after a specified time. Apply IRM settings directly using TeamsHub by Cyclotron. This is through a team-level tile view. Not to mention that this is a convenient method instead of navigating to a SharePoint Document Library or through the SharePoint Admin Center. Security and Document Tracking: Azure Information Protection (AIP) In any organization, collaboration involves internal and external users such as vendors, contractors, and agencies. Files or documents need to be shared only with the intended audience. Protect sensitive information outside the organization. Using AIP, administrators can automate tasks. Document tracking, setting expiry dates for access or revoking access based on unexpected or unusual behaviors can all be configured. Moreover, protected document access sends a notification using AIP. TeamsHub by Cyclotron allows users to actively monitor document access. Of course, this can be leveraged through a usage report which shows any failed access attempts. Security, Document Sharing and Tracking: External File Sharing Is external file sharing different than adding a guest to the Team? Yes – share selective content with people outside the organization. Moreover, these users are not members of any team. In such scenarios, administrators need to be vigilant of users’ activities. Moreover, administrators must monitor permissions granted on shared content and time limit before expiry. TeamsHub by Cyclotron provides a unified interface to bring up all externally shared files. This is one of the key governance aspects for administrators TeamsHub by Cyclotron provides two types of interfaces. First of all, a unified view of all externally shared files across the tenant. Furthermore, a team-level interface that shows externally shared files by that team. Provide access via a link to the document or to the document itself as below Can Edit – shared for collaboration with read-write access.Can View – read-only access to the document Stop sharing – mistakenly shared documents or suspicious activities detected. Finally, it is imperative more than ever to upgrade to virtual collaboration across geographical boundaries. This helps the organization to operate without any slowdown or worse shut down during emergency situations or crises. Consequently, automating governance and streamlining administration can help in creating a remote workforce very rapidly. TeamsHub by Cyclotron understands these needs and has inbuilt security for collaboration and compliance. This along with simplified governance enables your organization’s productivity to remain unscathed and uncompromised. Other Reading Governance Best Practices for Microsoft TeamsAutomate Top 5 Governance Features in Microsoft Teams
April 06, 2020 Automate Microsoft Teams Governance using TeamsHub by Cyclotron In this article we deep dive into the technical aspects to match theory to practice. Managing a complex environment such as Microsoft Teams can be challenging as well. We will cover some scenarios and provide a few features of TeamsHub that help mitigate it. We will list out a few real-world scenarios to automate Microsoft Teams governance. We will also demonstrate how TeamsHub by Cyclotron helps solve them. For our previous article on Microsoft Teams governance best practices – click here NOTE: The user interfaces have been slightly modified or masked to prevent plagiarism. Scenario 1 Complex Powershell Operations: In Microsoft Teams, an administrator is required to create and manage Teams’ governance through complex Powershell commands. Our solution to this problem is to provide a simplified solution and interface. We empower administrative capabilities for enhanced control. We believe in automating the workload and tasks in the background. No more Powershell commands. Say hello to automated Microsoft Teams governance. A beautifully designed interface collates all Teams together. It also provides other details such as members, owners, tags, public or private, etc. in a single pane of glass. We also provide the total number of teams as a quick reference to the sprawl in the environment. The image below shows the administrative interface available today to streamline manual tasks with various commands. In addition, we provide Site Provisioning. It allows you to automate Microsoft Team governance for site creation and management. This is achieved by Utilizing dynamic forms and external workflows. Defining naming policies based on custom attributes and by using templates. After the above setup, the following screen will show up for an end-user when requesting site creation. Scenario 2 General Governance: Microsoft Teams allows anyone to create a team and its associated SharePoint sites. Eventually, a multitude of Teams causes duplicate naming, inappropriately named teams and frustrated users. Consequently, this may also lead to orphaned teams and owners leading to information loss. We provide a user-friendly interface to automate Microsoft Teams governance, expiration policy, and guest access external users. Using our Governance settings, administrators can manage Teams’ creation and lifecycle using automated workflows. Other settings include managing guests, naming policies abased on standard blocked words and custom blocked words. In addition, we can set up expiration policies for each team via a set of rules and notifications such as Notifications to alert team owners on certain actions that need to be takenAlerts during the period of inactivity before Teams can be disposed or archived, Scenario 3 Teams Classification: Most of the time, finding the right information, content or people is a tedious operation. This is true for both administrators and end-users. Firstly, Administrators have a hard time finding the owner or members of a team. Secondly, if the team can be correctly classified by a label or tag for discoverability. TeamsHub by Cyclotron provides unified tagging and classification. This helps derive quick information and reduce overheads by updating multiple teams in one go. TeamsHub by Cyclotron, enables assigning of organization-specific classification. Administrators can publish organizational tags to appropriate groups whereas users can create and remove personal tags to their own groups. With this in mind, administrators can create Hubs – frequently used sites grouped by certain criteria. This helps in finding the right information quickly for end-users without having to search or find it. Manually adding and editing details per team is a tedious and time-consuming process – ask an administrator. Such updates include members, owners, description, and classification of Teams. So, we provide an easy to use a feature called Bulk Update to address this issue. Bulk Update provides administrators, editing capabilities across multiple teams in a single attempt. No more tedious processing and updating of details one by one. Scenario 4 Advanced Search and Reporting: Better search functionality leads to funnel information. This can be achieved by defining filters to get the desired result. The screen below shows the search functionality. Our Interactive Reporting allows administrators to gain smart insights. Actionable reports on various criteria such as metadata usage, team usage, or device and browser segmentation are available. Reports can also be exported to other formats such as Excel and JSON to integrate with third-party visualization tools. We provide native integration with PowerBI as well. Scenario 5 External Document Sharing, Data Protection, and Security: Collaboration involves external vendors and third-party contractors as well. With this intention, sharing documents with guest users requires some caution and inbuilt checks to prevent data leaks. We have automated robust supervision and document tracking for sharing confidential data with external parties. We provide best in class features of Office365 and Azure – Azure Information Protection, Data Loss Prevention and Information Rights Management. Additionally, we provide administrators a unified view of externally shared content. Our solution called Enhanced Security provides automatic provisioning of Information Rights Management (IRM) policies. Along with integrated Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies enables administrators to manage, track and revoke access for all externally shared documents in a single place. In summary, TeamsHub by Cyclotron provides a robust set of automated governance tools to help administrators manage Microsoft Teams efficiently. Using governance best practices as features in TeamsHub by Cyclotron, helps address some of the most pertinent issues. These are Teams sprawl, content sprawl, and security, as well as structure and permission models. In addition, we provide advanced Office 365 features such as IRM and DLP along with AIP About Cyclotron Cyclotron was proudly founded in San Francisco in 2014 with the sole intent of accelerating the success of our clients. We solve mission-critical business and technology challenges, through a proven network of industry-specific frameworks. We’re a trusted strategic partner to many innovative organizations in the financial, health and life sciences, public, retail, and technology sectors. Our solutions combined with your investment with us boosts productivity, enhances collaboration, and integrates intelligence across your entire enterprise.
April 03, 2020 Automate Top 5 Governance features in Microsoft Teams Microsoft Teams has done a tremendous job in improving workforce productivity and efficient collaboration. However, Microsoft Teams can be improved further by using automation to make administration and governance efficient and simpler. Can governance and automation facilitate freedom with control? We believe that it can – by automating Teams’ governance it enhances collaboration experiences and enables organizations to become better and smarter workplaces. In this article, we will explore the automated Top 5 governance features in Microsoft Teams. Let us talk about 5 features where Microsoft Teams can benefit from automation. 1. Teams and Site Provisioning Firstly, Microsoft Teams governance and automation begins with the creation of any Team. We can organize Teams and streamline governance by automating site creation and authorization, enforcing naming conventions and managing external workflows. 2. Teams Governance Secondly, automate Teams governance settings. For this purpose, A limited group of user must create and manage Teams. This can easily be restricted and configured using governance automation. Also, classifying Teams is a good use case for governance automation. This classification can be by a Team’s purpose, organization or other business criteria. Furthermore, Teams cannot be created by use of blocked words and naming standards can be automated with rules. 3. Teams Lifecycle Management Thirdly, managing Teams is the best use case for governance automation and to reduce the workload on administrators. Automating inactive team for archival or deletion by applying business rules and governance policies is a good practice. As a result, it enhances the visibility of active teams and uncovers the ones that are irrelevant or unnecessary. Consequently, teams owners can be auto-notified and based on their responses next steps can be taken. 4. Data Analytics and Reporting Fourthly, automated reporting generates actionable insights fetching Teams’ real-time data in just a click. As a result, users get to visualize activity reports on various criteria – metadata usage, teams usage, user performance, browser and device segmentation etc. Additionally, reports can be exported in other formats. As a result, data aggregation is richer and more powerful. 5. Data Security and External Access Finally, we can automate governance by utilizing the best of Office 365 and Azure features – Information Rights Management (IRM), Data Loss and Prevention (DLP) and Azure Information Protection (AIP). This provides a secure environment for collaboration both internally and externally. Summary In this article, we explored the Top 5 automated governance features in Microsoft Teams. Furthermore, it does not take a lot of complexity to automate. Also, it is important to note that simple implementation leads to better outcomes for administrators and end-users. To know more about the automation implemented in our product – TeamsHub by Cyclotron, please click here About Cyclotron Cyclotron was proudly founded in San Francisco in 2014 with the sole intent of accelerating the success of our clients. We solve mission-critical business and technology challenges, through a proven network of industry-specific frameworks. We’re a trusted strategic partner to many innovative organizations in the financial, health and life sciences, public, retail, and technology sectors. Our solutions combined with your investment with us boost productivity, enhances collaboration, and integrates intelligence across your entire enterprise.
