archTIS and Microsoft: Zero Trust information security for Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams has seen a surge in growth during the pandemic with over 115 million daily active users and growing.¹ With it, customer imperative for enabling safe and trustworthy online collaboration has also increased significantly. The speed and simplicity of Teams business users creating new teams and channels demands that IT and security groups have advanced tools and controls they might need to ensure business-critical information is properly protected.

archTIS’ NC Protect has integrated with Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) to empower IT and business owners to easily create secure teams and channels and enable guest access, enforcing Zero Trust policies at the file, chat, and message level to prevent accidental sharing, misuse, and data loss.

Human error is a vulnerability to your security

Many organizations struggle to keep track of data and ensure their information security, sharing, and usage policies are being followed. This can pose a serious risk when you consider 63 percent of insider-related incidents are the result of negligence and simple human error, with another 23 percent related to criminal insiders.²

From sharing confidential files or sensitive information with the wrong recipient to including regulated or confidential data in a chat, these costly mistakes are hard to avoid if you rely upon user behavior and training to protect your data. Worse, some organizations try to solve the problem by turning off information sharing and guest access in Teams altogether.

Better together: NC Protect and Microsoft Information Protection

NC Protect leverages Microsoft security investments to further prevent data loss and insider threats with data-centric information security that applies Zero Trust principles to dynamically adjust access and information protection in Microsoft Teams.

By combining MIP sensitivity labels and Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) attributes with NC Protect’s dynamic user- and attribute-based policies to control access, usage, and sharing, customers benefit from expanded protection and control over Teams collaboration to:

• Leverage MIP sensitivity labels in combination with other file and user attributes from Azure AD and Active Directory to dynamically adjust access to and control of what users can see, how they can use and share information, and with whom at the file and chat level.
• Empower team owners to set team and channel security using custom default rulesets from within the Teams app with just a few clicks, without any IT knowledge or skills to ensure internal and external users can collaborate securely.
• Gain additional information protection capabilities for Teams including secure personalized watermarks, read-only access through a zero-footprint file viewer, flexible information barriers, and IT-friendly private channels.
• Extend adaptive access, usage, and sharing policies across other Microsoft 365 apps for granular, dynamic information protection and next-generation data loss prevention (DLP).

Combining the power of MIP with NC Protect ensures granular policy-based control to secure collaboration and allows customers to realize the full value of their existing Microsoft investments.

How it works

NC Protect dynamically adjusts file security based on real-time comparison of user and file attributes to make sure that users view, use, and share files according to an organization’s regulations and policies. NC Protect leverages a file’s MIP sensitivity label as one of the attributes used to determine access and the level of protection needed based on the conditions at the time of access. With NC Protect, dynamically restrict access, usage, and sharing rights based on the file’s classification and the user’s current location, device, and security clearance.

Learn more

Learn more about the NC Protect integration with MIP and Teams and other Microsoft 365 apps, including demonstrations of how NC Protect’s dynamic attribute-based access control better protects against insider threats:

• Watch NC Protect for Microsoft Teams.
• Watch Simplified Access and Security Provisioning for Microsoft Teams.
• Watch NC Protect with Azure Information Protection.
• Find NC Protect for Teams, SharePoint, and O365 Apps in Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us at @MSFTSecurity for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.

About archTIS

archTIS Limited (ASX:AR9) is a global provider of innovative software solutions for the secure collaboration of sensitive information. The company’s award-winning data-centric information security solutions protect the world’s most sensitive content in government, defense, supply chain, enterprises, and regulated industries through attribute-based access and control (ABAC) policies. archTIS products include Kojensi, a multi-government certified platform for the secure access, sharing, and collaboration of sensitive and classified information; and NC Protect for enhanced information protection for file access and sharing, messaging, and emailing of sensitive and classified content across Microsoft 365 apps, Dropbox, Nutanix Files, and Windows file shares. For more information visit the archTIS website or follow archTIS on Twitter.

¹Watch out Zoom: Microsoft Teams now has more than 115 million daily users, Owen Hughes, TechRepublic. 28 October 2020.

²The Cost of Insider Threats, IBM Security. 2020.