How to Take MS Teams Security to a Level Above its Competitors

In recent years, videoconferencing and real-time communications platforms have quickly gone from being fringe technologies, to an integral part of operations for just about every team in the world.

But for many teams that were forced to rapidly adopt remote working, there was simply not enough time to do so with the right security considerations in mind.

No training, no disaster recovery plans or risk controls. It was a case of adapt to survive, with immediate effect.

Now, with the urgency of 2020 behind us, businesses have more time to think strategically about how they can fully secure their systems, and protect their data from threat.

Read on to find why we believe Microsoft Teams^* is the best platform for remote collaboration, and how you can use it to enhance security measures for your remote or hybrid team

Why MS Teams is the collaboration platform of choice

According to a survey, Microsoft Teams has been by far the most popular choice of remote collaboration software, with 94% of respondents adopting it during the pandemic.

For us at NFON, Microsoft Teams is the clear tool of choice too. Not just for its functionality, but security and reliability as well.

The platform stringently enforces organisation-wide two-factor authentication for user access, file storage is backed by Sharepoint encryption, and most recently, it has added end-to-end encryption (both in transit and at rest) to its list of security features.

As remote collaboration apps go, Microsoft Teams is certainly one of the most secure ones out there.

But while the software of MS Teams may be secure in isolation, data security risks are always prevalent, check out our full guide to data security for the full story. Network downtime, external attacks from hackers, and poor internal practices are just a handful of things that can lead to devastating consequences if not sufficiently controlled or accounted for.

But there is one way you can take the security of Microsoft Teams to the next level, and achieve better protection from these risks in the process...

Taking MS Teams to the next level with in-app telephony integration 

While Microsoft Teams combines many of the leading capabilities that remote teams require today – such as real-time communications and videoconferencing – there is no true telephony function at the core of Microsoft Teams.

Telephony is an integral component of any business communications infrastructure, and if integrated with a remote collaborations platform, it can provide significant security support.

With Cloudya – the leading cloud phone system from NFON – you can seamlessly integrate end-to-end telephony capabilities into the Teams interface, and in doing so, add numerous additional lines of defense to your business communications.

Unified communications

Integrating telephony into the Microsoft Teams platform essentially transforms Teams into a unified communications solution; enabling you and your organisation to communicate and work seamlessly across communications channels through the same interface.

Using more communications tools can mean potentially opening up more points of attack for hackers and other cybercriminals.

Unified communications solutions can enhance the security levels of your business by establishing one holistic system that is secure from end to end, rather than a number of disparate channels.

Geo redundancy

Cloudya is built on highly resilient, geo redundant architecture, meaning that in the event of communications downtime, it is able to failover to a secondary data centre.

The benefit this offers to Cloudya users is 99.9% communications uptime – thus allowing their business activities to stay up and running no matter what.

Integrating Cloudya into MS Teams lends this same robust connection and business continuity to your remote collaboration activity, and gives all of your videoconferencing a built-in failsafe.

This significantly reduces the security risks presented by network downtime, namely data loss.

One secure network for your whole team

The rise of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) culture has brought significant advantages in terms of higher productivity and boosted morale.

But it is also one of the most prevalent causes of data breaches.

For example, from 2005 through to 2015, nearly 41% of all data breach events were caused by employees losing devices.

By integrating cloud-based telephony into Microsoft Teams, you can benefit from all the freedom of BYOD policies with none of the security concerns.

For businesses that issue a ‘work phone’ to their employees, often the risk lies in when employees take the device home with them, or use it for personal reasons.

The Cloudya-Teams integration also works on the mobile app. Employees can connect to your business communications systems via the cloud, and securely leverage its capabilities and data from anywhere in the world, on their preferred device.

Then once they log out, that door to your business data is secure and off limits.

Key takeaways: How to take MS teams security a level above

As we transition into the world of hybrid working, free from the urgency of 2020, now is the time for businesses to think about what steps they can take to truly secure their systems, keeping risks under control, and protecting their valuable business assets.

• MS Teams is one of the most secure platforms on the market, but many of the security risks we face aren’t down to remote working software itself, but things like outages, external attacks, and most prevalently, errors made by staff.
  
  
• Integrating telephony into Microsoft Teams can significantly enhance the security and reliability of your remote collaborations by allowing you to leverage a robust cloud-hosted telephony solution through the familiar Teams interface.
  
  
  • Transforms Teams into a complete unified communications solution, reducing the number of entry points for data security threats.
    
    
  • Keep your comms up and running and minimise downtime by seamlessly leveraging Cloudya’s geo-redundant architecture from Microsoft Teams.
    
    
  • Achieve the freedom of BYOD culture without the security risks. Allowing remote, cross-device communications on the same secure network dramatically reduces the likelihood of your data being compromised.

Want to learn more about the benefits of integrating cloud-hosted telephony into Microsoft Teams? Drop us a line to arrange a call with one of the NFON team.