9 Secure Productivity Tools Used Boost Team Efficiency

Every business wants its employees to be productive and efficient. What can IT do to facilitate that goal? Team productivity and IT security are rooted in three primary principals (1) trust, (2) collaboration, and (3) mobility. All departments hold a stake in each and if you run a Microsoft shop you’re in luck. Microsoft offers an impressive array of secure productivity tools, both in the cloud and on-premise, to keep your employees—and your business—running like well-oiled machines. Let’s look at a few of Microsoft’s offerings in each of these groups.

Forming Trust with Secure Productivity Tools

Many tools fall into the trust group, but let’s focus on three:

1. Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). A new security service in the Windows 10 operating system, Windows Defender ATP monitors the operating system and sends the data it collects through a cloud security analytics engine to identify threats and recommend responses. Windows Defender ATP can then generate alerts and identify attackers’ tools, techniques, and procedures.
2. Windows Firewall with Advanced Security (WFAS). Microsoft’s latest firewall, WFAS, works in conjunction with Internet Protocol security (IPsec) to “block unauthorized network traffic flowing into or out of the local device,” thereby reducing network security threats and protecting corporate data.
3. Microsoft Office 365 Advanced eDiscovery. Electronic discovery is “the process of identifying and delivering electronic information that can be used as evidence in legal cases.” Using the Search feature in Office 365, you can collect data and browse content sources, and then apply the Advanced eDiscovery feature’s text analytics and machine learning techniques for analysis and legal defense.

Fostering Collaboration with Secure Productivity Tools

Office 365 is built with collaboration in mind. Features that boost efficiency through collaboration include:

1. OneDrive for Business
2. Real-time document collaboration through Office productivity apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote and Microsoft SharePoint
3. Skype for Business
4. Office 365 Planner
5. Office 365 Groups

Promoting Mobility with Secure Productivity Tools

The ninth secure productivity tool is Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP), a set of subscription-based technologies designed to help you virtualize and manage Microsoft software and features as well as recover after a system failure. The virtualization you get through MDOP makes working from anywhere even easier.

All of these tools and features are great, but why patch together a solution that enables trust, collaboration, and mobility from individual applications when Microsoft Secure Productive Enterprise (SPE) can do it for you? You can choose between two versions of SPE depending on your businesses needs. Both offer combinations of Microsoft’s most powerful productivity tools, including Office, SharePoint, Microsoft Intune, Yammer, Power BI Pro, Microsoft MyAnalytics, Microsoft Cloud App Security, and Microsoft Azure Active Directory.

You want a secure, productive organization, and All Phases IT can help. See how to develop a robust set of secure productivity tools for your organization.