The last few years have seen a huge shift in how organizations work with their data. The COVID pandemic accelerated a digital transformation as workers transitioned from the office to home-based and back into hybrid working environments. With this new set-up, collaboration is key to worker efficiency. However, the adoption of Microsoft 365 and Teams as a front-end platform has created new challenges for security teams.

We are pleased to announce the launch of NC Encrypt to provide independent encryption key management and Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) support for Microsoft 365 applications and SharePoint Server environments. The sheer number of communication and collaboration channels the M365 platform has introduced, increases the vulnerability of sensitive data and potential for accidental data loss or overexposure, making protection mechanisms such as encryption critical.

Demands on data have created a host of challenges for security and administration, and traditional tools are not keeping up. As we expand collaboration and business activities outside the office, data moves more widely and user permissions expand with every responsibility or team project. Keeping ahead of this permission burden is tough yet necessary for zero trust “don’t trust, verify” security.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) initiative to adopt the Executive Order for Zero Trust is heating up. This week the Pentagon’s CIO, John Sherman, announced plans to implement a zero trust architecture agency-wide within the next 5 years – by 2027. To support this initiative, he plans to announce a new strategy next month to help meet the ambitious deadline for an agency of over 4 million people.