Mimecast and Office 365

Multi-cloud email management

According to Microsoft, Office 365 is its fastest growing business ever with over 100m total commercial users and 50,000 new organisations adopting the service each month. What’s more, the type of organisation adopting cloud email is starting to change. Gartner Research recently found that 78% of organisations surveyed are either on Office 365 or planning to use it. Exchange Online, the single most important workload cited in Office 365, is driving adoption.

The potential cost savings of leveraging Microsoft infrastructure rather than dealing with the costs and complexity of on-premise infrastructure are compelling – but the challenges that threaten email, still exist in the cloud:

• Email is under siege by sophisticated attackers using spam, malware, phishing, spear-phishing and whaling for financial gain. Protection must be available from anywhere and on every device
• Corporate information in the form of emails and files must be stored and managed. Administrators need to respond to litigation requests and give employees rapid access to their information, no matter where they are working
• Email downtime brings productivity to a screeching halt. The organisation must protect against lost revenue, unhappy customers and brand damage

While the challenges don’t change, an added risk is that organisations are co-mingled with millions of other tenants on Office 365. Making it a far more attractive target than ever existed on-premise. For administrators, response to email threats is measured in minutes not hours. When a problem occurs, administrators need rapid access to the console to quickly update policies and address problems. In the event of downtime, employees expect to be online without delay. This responsibility doesn’t change when going to a hosted cloud environment.

Mimecast Security for Office 365

Mimecast adds a critical layer of defence to Microsoft Office 365 for enhanced protection against known and emerging threats. With email remaining a primary attack vector, relying on Microsoft security alone gives attackers just one lock to pick and increases your exposure to attack, especially as the adoption of Office 365 grows. Defence in depth protection is essential in the cloud, just as it was on-premise. Mimecast’s extensive threat intelligence network and blended security technologies deliver an enhanced security posture to make Office 365 safer for your organisation.

Mimecast Archiving for Office 365

The risks of technological failure, human error and malicious intent exist in any environment. Although Office 365 stores multiple copies of data, all reside within the same architecture and platform which becomes a single-point-of failure. You lose an independent backup and validation reference of critical information like you had with traditional backups. Mimecast provides retention management, eDiscovery and rapid access for employees to archived data. And it’s an independent, verifiable cloud archive.

Mimecast Continuity for Office 365

All cloud services are susceptible to disruption and in the case of Office 365, system wide or tenant specific failures can mean no email, no data and no access to the admin console, while you wait for Microsoft to restore service. Mimecast removes this single-point-of-failure by providing a seamless alternative email delivery route, ensuring uninterrupted access to email, directly from Outlook, mobile and the web. All delivered 100% in the cloud.

Mimecast for Hybrid Environments

For most organisations, moving to Office 365 requires careful planning and coordination to make sure archives are available, access isn’t disrupted and critical security policies are maintained. Mimecast eases the transition to the cloud with mail routing capabilities to handle complex environments, legacy archive data management tools and a 100% continuity SLA. Security and archiving policies can be applied before, during and after a migration to make sure the organisation is protected and critical data is not lost.