5 Best Features of Microsoft’s Advanced Threat Protection Software

Security is one, if not the top most important priority a business should have. Without it, imminent threats would constantly be another burden the business would have to deal with. Microsoft offers various security platforms, one of those being Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection. Read on to learn how to protect your company from cybersecurity threats. 

Breaking it Down   

This Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is a cloud-based email server, which prevents viruses, spoofing, and malware to occur to your organization. It’s one of the features included in Microsoft’s enterprise E5 and business premium offers. The basic starting price is $2.60 per user- a low cost, for high protection! 

Besides the cost-effective advantages, here are the following features to sell you on it even further: 

Top 5 Features of ATP: 

1. Attachments 

This ensures any attachments coming through to your business emails are safe and not malicious or virus-prone. This means, whenever someone in your organization receives an email with an attachment, this safety feature will automatically test the attachment to ensure it doesn’t affect your business. 

If everything is normal, the attachment will open and if not, it will be deleted. 

2. Links 

Nowadays, hacks and general cyber-attacks often occur through links. This is obviously especially prominent from those links you get from strange third-party sources. It is evident to most to not click on these links, but mistakes do happen. 

But that’s why ATP provides a safe link feature. If the link from the email does get clicked on, then this feature simultaneously checks it before allowing you to open it. If it is unsafe, it will be deemed as such and blocked. Otherwise, if it is safe, it will open as normal. 

3. Spoofing 

Spoofing, although often associated with a negative connotation, is also necessary at times. For example: an assistant speaking on your behalf, lead generation, sales emails, and more. Of course, you can’t do it all yourself so others within your organization, or those who you’ve hired need to ‘spoof’ on your behalf. 

For this exact reason, it is crucial to not limit all types of spoofing. The concern should be that it is legitimate, authorized spoofing that occurs instead of those malicious spoof emails. This is why ATP offers a spoof intelligence feature that ensures your organization is protected against that issue.

Your business is then able to configure certain spoof filters to detect differences from real and fake spoof email activity. 

4. Anti-Phishing 

Thanks to machine learning and various impersonation algorithms, ATP is able to provide an anti-phishing feature to protect your company from phishing occurrences. This feature allows for verification of any and all incoming emails in order to detect any suspicious activity.

After your security team has integrated the ATP, this feature will be automatically applied. Based on the way your team has implemented this, the anti-phishing feature will check certain actions and restrict any phishing queries. 

5. Sharepoint, Microsoft Teams, and OneDrive 

The three platforms listed above are the most used within business settings in order to increase collaboration and share ideas easily and efficiently. However, just because it is Microsoft-based, security features still need to be implemented to ensure a safe and secure environment. 

ATP is able to block any malicious activity attempting to immerse itself into your team site or platform. Once surely identified as malicious, the file for example, will be locked and restricted from anyone being able to open it. Thus, even if not deleted, it will not pose any threat. 

Each file within Sharepoint, Microsoft Teams, and OneDrive is scanned by ATP in order to pick out any suspicious documents that may be lurking about. 

Time to Secure Your Business?

Real-time protection is more important than ever in today’s new technologically advanced world. If you don’t have a security team, or are looking for help in integrating a security platform into your organization, get in touch with us today!

Secure your business and don’t worry about the constant external cybersecurity threats that exist. 

Your Peak State is the Key to Everything!

State is the most important aspect of personal development. You could dismiss every topic en every PD program available and only take State into practice, and you’ll still have the most powerful tool in the toolbox at your disposal.

But what is State? It’s the way you feel at any given moment, physically, emotionally, and mentally.

Your edge in life depends 80% on your psychology, and the other 20% on the mechanics of habits. That is a force at work at all times, and it doesn’t care about what it does to you; it just works that way, like gravity… it can work to your advantage and amusement, or it can seriously hurt you; but hey, it’s not personal, it’s just the way it works.

But if you could take control of this force, by controlling your consistent emotions, you could begin to consciously and deliberately reshape your daily experience of life.

Living in a peak State is exhilarating, and life-changing, yet it’s still a rare condition for most people.

It doesn’t have to be the case for you.

How do you raise your life to this level then?

It will require first that you let go of the past, master your emotions, and adopt an excellence mindset.

Your emotions are the foundation that peak State is built upon. They have the power to control everything in our lives –mood, decisions, actions, you name it. If you want positive progress, you need positive emotions.

The Triad of Emotional Psychology

 To start creating a positive mindset, you need to understand first the Triad of Emotional Psychology and master the three forces that control your emotions: your physiology, your language, and your focus.

1. Your Physiology

This is the first component of the Triad. It refers to your body and all its systems.

The way you use your body affects how you feel mentally and emotionally. You must be aware of this connection: if you stand up straight, you’ll feel a sense of pride and alertness; if you slump over and neglect your body, you’ll start to feel down and negative –and consider what will happen if you get into the habit of doing any of these consistently…

The next time you find yourself in a certain mood, pay attention to your body and how you’re using it at that moment, and you’ll start to make the connection, and in no time you will start being able to change it as well.

You have the power to reset your State at will.

1. Your Focus

Wherever your focus goes, your energy will flow. What you put your focus on is where you’ll set your intention; consciously or unconsciously.

If you are driving on the highway and turn your head and your attention completely to your left –and hear me well, don’t try that; especially on the highway!- you will notice that your car will steer to the left; not by itself, of course, but by a combination of your focusing your attention to that direction and moving dominant parts of your body as well. This is why we know of so many cases of unconfident drivers crashing their car into the only tree or telephone pole in sight; they see it, begin to fear crashing into it, and they involuntarily steer right into it.

The same thing happens to you in other aspects.

Learning to set your focus on the positive things is one of the most essential steps toward achieving your peak State, and you will also start moving in the direction of the things you do want.

1. Your Language

This is the third component of the Triad. The way you speak –to yourself internally and out loud- determines how you operate in the world; especially the questions you ask.

Your brain is programmed to come up with an answer to whatever question is presented to it; so, if you were to ask “how come all these bad things happen to me?”, or “why is it that I can never make enough money?”, then your brain will come up with whatever answer could fit that question, and it doesn’t matter if it is real, it will match your current set of beliefs, and you’ll feel powerless as a result.

The way you talk to yourself will determine what emotions you feel, so choose your words and your tone wisely. You will still be talking to yourself internally; but instead of having a negative, judgmental character disapproving everything you do, you can have a coach showing you a better, most effective way to do things next time. You will benefit from the feedback, and you’d have learned something as well.

Reprogram your usual phrases through repetition, using what we call incantations. When you repeat a phrase with enough emotional intensity, you start to believe and embody it (just as with your lousy self-talk). Use the power of incantations by designing and using the ones that support you the most.

Let’s continue this topic next week.
Until then, stay strong!  

One of the core values we have as a company is to inspire and empower people in all aspects of their lives. Additionally, if you want to read about our Custom Software Solutions and Consulting Services, please visit www.isucorp.ca, or book a meeting to review your software project.

3 New Technologies to Implement into Your Business

Technology is advancing and so is the way your business is running. Change can be tedious at times, but it’s important you adapt, and adapt quickly in order to keep up with today’s world. You will most likely find yourself or your business using various new technologies whether to test out different aspects of your business or to improve efficiency. 

The top 3 technologies used by most businesses today are:

1. Artificial Intelligence

2. Collaboration and Productivity Resources

3. Data

If you’re using these technologies or are considering taking the next step, then continue reading to learn how they will impact your organization and integrate with the current tools you’re already using. Ensure that these technologies are implemented correctly in order to help your business grow. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI has been around for a while, but has become increasingly more and more popular amongst today’s tech industry. This is due to technological advancements, such as: speech recognition, machine learning, and image analysis. 

One of the most common uses of AI are automated chatbots for business websites. These chatbots generate quick responses to customer questions in order to assist employees in their daily task work and overall improve the company’s efficiency with their customer relationships.

However, AI can be tailored in various ways besides automated chatbots and services like Alexa or Siri. 

AI benefits

To ensure AI will be a good fit for your business consider what your goals are, how you will succeed and generate ROI.

AI is a great investment and most times, is extremely beneficial for a diverse range of industries. 

Our suggestion would be: before jumping in, maybe try out a few introductory projects and analyze the success factors. If you find it’s helping your business, then take the next step and invest! 

Collaboration and Productivity Resources 

Communication is integral to run any type of business smoothly and efficiently. Even more so with the increase in remote work, especially with COVID-19. It’s no shock then, that collaboration and productivity resources are gaining more of a heavy emphasis for everyday work. 

Apps that help with this are: Yammer, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and so on. Besides collaboration, there are tons of benefits to gain from apps like these. Although, if not properly implemented, there can be a lot of challenges that arise. Instead of increasing productivity, you could end up doing the complete opposite. 

Implementation Notes to Keep in Mind: 

• Choose a tool that can be easily integrated: Any form of feed or messages would be useless if it takes multiple steps to get to where you’re going. (e.g. important conversations in Slack) 

• Structure and Governance: Without this, the employees taking part will get confused in the app and will not be able to be efficient and productive as intended. 

• Research: Besides the tools mentioned above, there are a plethora of available resources to choose from. Ensure you do your research to choose the best possible tool to increase your business’ collaboration and productivity. 

Data

Everything revolves around data. From the base of the organization to the top in terms of research, marketing and developing, data is more significant than ever before. 

However, many companies make the mistake of collecting enormous amounts of data and not setting enough time aside to analyze it in order to properly interpret and incorporate the results from the research. You must make a plan, an outline, in order to make proper use of the data. 

How? 

Be specific! Narrow down your end goal: what are you looking for? If you begin just naively searching, you will get stuck and go down an endless rabbit hole. Ensure the research being conducted and the data being collected is relevant to your business needs. And do not, I repeat, do not over-collect. This will only consume a lot of unnecessary time and take away any form of productivity.

The more you narrow in on your objectives and think about what you want to achieve as an organization, the easier it will be.

Need Help Implementing New Technologies?

We can not only help you come up with a plan to implement the new technologies, we can help you understand them. A lack of knowledge is the biggest factor in failure, if you want to succeed you need to learn. 

We can also go over some custom software ideas for your organization, in order to ensure the technology is specifically tailored towards your business.

Contact us today for more information!