Sound familiar?
Multi-factor is on some accounts and not others.
Usually yours. Not the shared inbox everyone actually uses.
You assumed Microsoft backs up your mail.
It does not, past the retention window, and that is usually discovered at the worst moment.
People who left still have working logins.
Their mail still forwards somewhere, and nobody remembers where.
Getting locked out was a nightmare.
New phone, dead authenticator app, and then an afternoon getting back into your own account.
Someone is emailing your clients pretending to be you.
Your domain has no real protection against it, so the fake looks exactly like the real thing.
Four settings fix most of this. Almost nobody has all four turned on.
Why is multi-factor authentication the whole game for email security?
The overwhelming majority of small business email compromises would have been stopped by MFA. It is free, it takes an afternoon to roll out properly, and the reason it does not get done is that somebody has to explain it to staff kindly.
Does Microsoft back up your mail the way you think?
Microsoft keeps the service running; it does not guarantee you can recover a mailbox somebody deleted ninety days ago. That is your responsibility and it needs a separate backup, which most businesses discover at exactly the wrong moment.
What happens to accounts for people who left?
Every business we take on has at least one. Sometimes it still forwards mail somewhere. Offboarding should be a written checklist rather than a memory, and it takes ten minutes to build.
How does email authentication stop people spoofing you?
SPF, DKIM and DMARC decide whether a stranger can send mail that looks like it came from your domain. Most small business domains have one of the three half-configured, which is the same as none.
What do people ask before choosing microsoft 365 and email?
- Do we need a Microsoft 365 backup if Microsoft hosts it?
- Yes. Microsoft protects the platform, not your content decisions. Deleted, overwritten or maliciously wiped mail past the retention window is gone unless you backed it up.
- Will multi-factor authentication annoy our staff?
- For about a week, and then it becomes invisible. Set up properly it prompts on new devices rather than every login, which is the difference between people accepting it and people finding ways around it.
- Someone is sending email pretending to be our owner. Can that be stopped?
- Largely, yes. Correct SPF, DKIM and DMARC records make it much harder for spoofed mail to be delivered, and we can also flag external mail so staff see it is not internal.
- Can you move us from an old email system?
- Yes, including from a hosting company's mail or an old Exchange server. Migrations are planned around a quiet period, and old mail comes with you.
- Which license do we actually need?
- Usually less than you are sold. We look at what each person does before recommending a tier, because paying for security features nobody enabled is the most common waste we find.
Where do we provide microsoft 365 and email?
We cover the towns listed below, with a page for each. Each page covers what we typically find in that town, because a warehouse off Route 28 and a five person firm on Maple Avenue do not have the same problem.
How do I get started?
Start with a fifteen minute phone call. You describe what is annoying you and we tell you whether we are the right fit.
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