The established patterns of work we relied on for years are undergoing monumental changes. Asynchronous communication is the new norm. Meetings transcend time and space. The promise of AI is being realized—amplifying human ingenuity in ways that feel like magic.

To thrive in this new world, every organization needs a digital fabric that binds the organization together with secure communication, collaboration, and creation. This digital fabric will enable flexibility and strengthen connections across people and teams. It will seamlessly weave together data, automation, and AI—all in the flow of work. It needs to extend beyond organizational boundaries to customers and partners. And it needs to include every type of worker—information, frontline, and flexible workers.

We are innovating across the Microsoft Cloud to deliver this digital fabric to empower everyone in this new era. And at the center of it all is Microsoft Teams.

At Ignite, we are introducing exciting new apps and capabilities that in one year will be just as integrated into your daily workflow as Teams is today. Let’s dive in.

Collaboration that transcends boundaries and keeps you in the flow of work

As computing becomes embedded in the real world, the real world is being embedded in computing—that’s Microsoft Mesh, the metaverse platform. We’re taking that experience and building Mesh right into Teams, recreating a lot of what we value about being together and extending productivity beyond what was previously possible.

Mesh for Microsoft Teams introduces a new generation of two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) meetings. How you project yourself in an immersive space really matters. Personalized avatars give you control to customize your avatar and use AI to imitate movements and gestures that enable you to bring your physical presence into the conversation, even when your camera is off.

Organizations will also be able to create immersive spaces that resemble physical spaces such as conference rooms, design centers, and networking lounges to enhance camaraderie, spark creativity, and foster serendipitous water-cooler connections. Learn more about Mesh for Microsoft Teams.

New updates to the Teams meeting experience

We are bringing new updates to the Teams meeting experience to foster more inclusive and productive hybrid meetings. Users can now assign roles from the scheduling form and see the order of raised hands to ensure that all the voices are heard. Also, we’re revamping the mobile overflow menu to prioritize key actions, like viewing chat and adding a notification drawer for in-meeting system messages, so users can preview, collapse, and clear all notifications with one tap.

Unlock better hybrid meeting experiences

In partnership with some of the world’s best hardware partners, we’re working to deliver Teams experiences on devices that help people stay connected and participate fully in meetings regardless of where they are attending from.

Upon certification, the Yealink desk Vision AIO24 with its new 24-inch display can be used as a standalone device for Teams collaboration or connected to a PC as a second screen.

Logitech Tap Scheduler is joining the Teams panels portfolio pending certification, enabling people to easily view meeting room availability, location information, and meeting details at a glance.

Direct Guest Join allows users to join a third-party meeting, with basic controls, from their Teams Rooms. Similarly, it allows people to join Teams meetings from their third-party room systems. Today, this is available with Zoom and Cisco. Next year we will expand this to include Bluejeans and GoToMeeting.  

Surface Hubs can now be managed from the Teams admin center alongside other Teams devices. In the coming months, Microsoft Teams Room managed services will be expanded to include Surface Hub in the cloud-based IT management and monitoring service.

Make cross-organizational collaboration easier and more secure

Work doesn’t happen in a silo—it requires communication and collaboration with individuals both inside and outside the organization. We’re delivering new capabilities to Microsoft Teams Connect that remove barriers and make it easier and more secure to collaborate with anyone.

Share a channel with individuals and teams across multiple organizations, schedule a meeting, collaborate in real-time on apps, and share channels with up to 50 teams and as many organizations as you need (available in public preview in the first quarter of 2022). Meanwhile, we are extending Teams chat capabilities, enabling you to chat with team members outside your organization with a Teams personal account (available by the end of 2021).

Deliver engaging and memorable events

A host of new webinars and broadcasting capabilities will make it easy to set up and deliver professional, engaging experiences to internal and external audiences. The virtual green room will enable organizers and presenters to socialize, monitor chat, conduct Q&As, manage attendee settings, and share content before the event starts. Organizers and presenters will be able to manage what attendees see to ensure that attendees will only see shared content and participants that are brought on screen. Both of these capabilities will be available in preview in early 2022.

Leading events and hospitality management platform, Cvent, is now integrated with Teams. Starting in early 2022, customers can use Cvent to manage the event lifecycle, including registration and agenda management, and to deliver the virtual meeting and event experience via Teams.

Unlock teamwork with collaborative apps

Collaborative apps are a new generation of applications with collaboration at the core. Designed and optimized for the flexibility of hybrid work inside Teams, they bring the relevant processes, data, and people together to accomplish more. New collaborative apps from partners including Atlassian, SAP, and ServiceNow enable customers to engage with these apps across chat, channels, and meetings. Meanwhile, new experiences between Dynamics 365 and Teams bring more data and connectivity right into your workflow.

The redesigned Teams Store, now available, makes finding the right app for your needs simple and streamlined.

Streamline the contact center experience

A new all-in-one digital contact center solution, powered by Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service and Teams, brings together traditional contact center, unified communications, and customer service capabilities into a single, integrated software as a service (SaaS) solution. With this new all-in-one solution, you’ll be able to deliver chat and voice connectivity, extensibility with other business applications, and intelligence embedded at every step of the customer service experience.

Empowering creators everywhere

We’re completely reimaging Office to go beyond the traditional confines of a document, spreadsheet, or presentation, spilling over to entirely new mediums. Just like Teams transformed collaboration and productivity, Microsoft Loop is the next big breakthrough in Microsoft 365.

Microsoft Loop is a new app that combines a powerful and flexible canvas with portable components that move freely and stay in sync across applications—enabling teams to think, plan, and create together. Microsoft Loop has three elements: Loop components, Loop pages, and Loop workspaces.

Loop components are atomic units of productivity that help you collaborate and complete work right within chats, meetings, emails, documents, and more. You can build your own Loop components, or leverage ours, including:

• Voting table makes it easy for teams to brainstorm, drive consensus, and finalize decisions together.
• Status tracker will help you gather information from your team, track progress towards all aspects of your project, and always maintain an up-to-date view of the project across your team.

Loop pages are flexible canvases where you can organize your components and pull in helpful elements like links, files, or data in ways that suit your specific project needs.

Loop workspaces are shared spaces that allow you and your team to see and group everything important to your project. And workspaces make it easy for you to catch up on what everyone is working on, react to others’ ideas, and track progress toward shared goals.

Microsoft Loop components are rolling out in preview across Microsoft 365 apps, such as Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and OneNote in the coming months, with more Microsoft Loop functionality to follow.

The promise of AI has always been about augmenting human capability in ways that feel like magic. That’s becoming reality with Context IQ. Context IQ turns insights into action, harnessing the power of Microsoft Graph to glean insights about your work throughout the day, then predicting, seeking, and suggesting information you need, right when you need it—at the point of action.

For example, Context IQ takes Microsoft Editor, to the next level, helping with things like suggesting a relevant file or document, finding available calendar times with collaborators, suggesting colleagues to tag in emails, or suggesting related Loop components for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales opportunity records.

We’re boosting our support for video creation with the recent inclusion of Clipchamp to the Office family. Clipchamp empowers people to create beautiful, professional-looking videos easily and quickly. Its fun and intuitive interface combined with powerful capabilities and a large stock library help ensure people can bring their video visions to life.

We are launching new experiences on Office.com and the Office app for Windows with new Home, My Content, and Create pages. These new experiences make it easier to find all of one’s content and files across apps and storage locations, see what needs attention, and get to the apps and templates needed for work—all in one place.

The new experience will begin rolling out to users next week. Learn more about these updates in the Office blog.

The digital employee experience is the employee experience

The employee experience is no longer defined by or tethered to a physical location. We need new ways to keep employees engaged and informed, all in the flow of work. That’s where Microsoft Viva comes in.   

Microsoft Viva is now available for purchase as a suite that includes the Insights, Learning, and Topics modules. The Viva suite will also include a new goals management module in 2022 based on our recent acquisition of Ally.io. Viva Learning is now generally available for everyone. Finally, we are launching new experiences for Viva Connections mobile and desktop.  

Viva Insights will offer a new effective meetings experience and manager insights to help employees build new habits and norms that boost connection, productivity, and wellbeing.  

Finally, we’re happy to share that several of the partner integrations we announced for Viva Learning and Viva Connections earlier this year—including SAP SuccessFactors, Qualtrics, ServiceNow, Cornerstone OnDemand, and UKG —are now generally available. Learn more about all of our Microsoft Viva announcements.

Windows for a hybrid world

Each of these exciting new innovations are built for and powered by Windows—the only OS designed for hybrid work. The launch of Windows 11 means easy, zero-touch deployment and the ability to tune devices and tools to meet the unique needs of individual teams and employees:

• To make it easier for organizations using Intune to take advantage of the Windows Update for Business deployment service, we are integrating controls for scheduling and deploying Windows feature updates directly into Intune. Learn more in our blog post.
• Microsoft Test Base for Microsoft 365, now generally available, is a cloud service that enables independent software vendors, enterprise partners, and organizations to test their line of business applications against versions of Windows Client and Server. Read more about Test Base for Microsoft 365.

• Universal Print is a cloud service that allows users to securely print to any printer in the organization without a need for print servers. Learn more about Universal Print.

Read about 11 things we like about Windows 11 in this Tech Community blog.

New enhancements to Windows 365, including Windows 11 support on Business Edition

We’ve taken the PC to the cloud with Windows 365, so businesses of all sizes can securely stream a full Windows experience to any device. You can now choose to experience Windows 11 in the cloud with the Windows 365 Enterprise edition today. Support for the Business edition is coming soon.

There are several new updates being made to provide an optimal Windows 365 experience, including:

• Enhanced security and support via a virtual Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip to enable Windows 11.
• Web client improvements for faster load times, better performance, local resource settings, accessibility features, and more.
• Support for Azure Active Directory joined Windows 365 eliminates the need for on-premises or Azure infrastructure.
• Endpoint analytics resource reports in Microsoft Endpoint Manager provide metrics on central processing unit (CPU) and random access memory (RAM) performance in Windows 365.

For customers who want a modern cloud service for desktop and application virtualization but also need to support some apps and data on-premises, we are announcing the preview of Azure Virtual Desktop for Azure Stack HCI. Learn more about Azure Virtual Desktop announcements.

Also new to Microsoft 365

According to our research, more than 60 percent of small businesses said they didn’t feel equipped to handle cyberthreats. Microsoft Defender for Business is a new endpoint security solution that helps organizations with up to 300 employees protect themselves against cyberattacks. It will be available as a standalone solution and will be included in Microsoft 365 Business Premium. Learn more about Microsoft Defender for Business.

Looking ahead

From redesigning physical meeting spaces to include those not in the room to reinventing the way you create digitally in the world of hybrid work, we’re committed to enabling every employee to thrive in this new world of work. This is just the beginning, and we can’t wait to share more with you in the coming months. Stay tuned.

The post What’s new in Microsoft 365—How we’re empowering everyone for a new world of hybrid work appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Productivity

Microsoft 365’s productivity tools use AI to help people create, collaborate, analyze, write, present, organize, and manage their work. Our innovations in core productivity are focused on two opportunities: creating entirely new experiences that take advantage of the latest innovations and breathing new life into familiar apps and experiences with powerful cloud services.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is the hub for teamwork. In response to requests from Teams customers, we’re pleased to announce Private channels, Multiwindow chats, meetings and calls, pinned channels, and task integration with To Do and Planner. We’re improving collaboration capabilities between Outlook and Teams, making it easy to send an email thread to a Teams channel for further discussion.

And we’re bringing the Yammer app into Teams, adding the ability for users to pin the app to the left-hand rail and making Teams the hub for both focused team collaboration and broad, open communities. We are also delivering new industry-tailored innovations and experiences including tools for Healthcare and Firstline workers. Healthcare providers can now schedule and conduct B2C virtual consultations through Teams with new Virtual Consults capabilities, and new features like SMS Sign-In and Global Sign-Out make it quick and easy for Firstline workers to securely access Teams from their mobile devices.

The New Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Bing are the web browser and search engine for business. We are pleased to announce that the general availability of the all-new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser is targeted for January 15, 2020. You can download the release candidate today.

The all-new Microsoft Edge offers the enterprise new tab page, where you’ll have direct access to your Microsoft 365 files, sites, and intranet search, making every tab you open a portal to productivity. And with the new Microsoft Search in Bing integration, searching for information at work is as easy as searching the web. You can now access files, people, office floorplans, acronym definitions, and more company information from across your Microsoft 365 ecosystem right from the search bar.

Finally, Microsoft Edge is now available across all your devices—including Windows 10, Windows 8x, Windows 7, macOS, iOS, and Android. Your passwords and favorites will roam seamlessly across all your devices—and with native Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) sign-in, you can search for work files right from your phone.

The Office mobile app

We all want to be able to work on the go from mobile devices and we’re always looking to simplify and improve the experience. Today, we’re announcing a new mobile experience for Office that combines three of the suite’s most popular apps—Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—into a single go-to app for mobile productivity. Now you no longer need to download each app separately and will have everything you need to be productive on the go. And with the new Actions pane, you can intuitively complete a variety of common on-the-go tasks, such as creating and signing PDFs and sharing files between devices.

The new Office app uses the unique advantages of mobile devices to make content creation easier. You can snap a picture of a document and turn it into an editable word file, for instance, or transform tables from a printed page into an Excel spreadsheet. Launched today as a public preview, the Office app is available to Android users through the Google Play Store and to iOS users through Apple’s TestFlight program.

Fluid Framework

At Build 2019, we announced Fluid Framework, a new technology and set of experiences that will make collaboration seamless by breaking down the barriers between apps. It offers three key capabilities. First, experiences powered by the Fluid Framework will support multi-person coauthoring on web and document content at industry-leading speed and scale. Second, it provides a componentized document model that allows authors to deconstruct content into collaborative building blocks, use them across applications, and combine them in a new, more flexible kind of document. Third, the Fluid Framework makes room for intelligent agents to work alongside humans to translate text, fetch content, suggest edits, perform compliance checks, and more.

Today, we are announcing a public preview of the Fluid Framework end user experience and a private preview for developers. Over time, we expect these capabilities to light up in experiences across Microsoft 365, including within chat in Teams, mail in Outlook, portals in SharePoint, notes in OneNote, and documents in Office.

Cortana

We’re using AI to bring you personalized experiences in Outlook and making Cortana your personal productivity assistant. Today, we announced Play My Emails in Outlook for iOS to help you catch up and act on emails hands-free. With new natural voice and language recognition, Cortana can intelligently read out your new emails and share changes to your day. A masculine voice option is also now available with Play My Emails, further customizing your personal productivity assistant experience. We’re also announcing that Scheduler in Outlook is shipping in preview; you can use it to hand off scheduling meetings and coordinating participants to Cortana.

Beginning next month, Cortana can also help you prepare for your day by sending you a briefing email that includes a summary of your meetings, relevant documents for your day, and reminders to follow up on commitments you’ve made in email.

AI in Office

You’re busy and have a lot on your mind—and even more on your to-do list. We get it, and over the past year, we brought the magic of AI to Office to help you get more done. With innovations that include entering data into Excel with a digital pen, audio transcription in Word—which converts a new or existing audio file into a written transcription—and Presenter Coach in PowerPoint (in public preview for the web), which helps business professionals, teachers, and students become more effective presenters, we committed to enlightening Office with AI to help you be more productive.

Today our journey continues. Now Excel supports natural language queries, so users can now ask a question of their data, just like they would if they were talking to a person, and get quick answers—all without having to write a formula. Available to Office Insiders, this new natural language ability is another step towards making data insights and visualization more approachable and accessible to users with various levels of Excel experience.

We’re also making it easier for you to plan time away from work and continue to improve your work best practices. For example, MyAnalytics can help you prepare for time off by automating out of office notification setup, informing collaborators of your time away, resolving meetings you’ll miss, and more. Integrated into the Insights pane in Outlook, MyAnalytics is now able to encourage best practices like booking meetings promptly, adding an agenda, and meeting follow ups, and adding new AI-powered suggestions in Outlook that allow you to delay email delivery when working outside the recipient’s working hours.

Microsoft Project

Last week, we announced a major step toward achieving our new vision for project management with the general availability of the new Microsoft Project. The new Project offers a redesigned user experience that is simple and intuitive. Teams can quickly add new members and set up tasks, and then easily switch between grids, boards, or timeline (Gantt) charts to track progress. And because Project is part of the Microsoft 365 family, project teams can save time and do more with built-in connections to familiar apps like Teams and Office. In addition, the new service provides greater visibility into your projects and powerful tools to help you anticipate future needs. Create stunning interactive reports in Power BI, so you can visualize every aspect of each project at a glance. And get the big picture view of all your projects across your organization with visual, interactive cards.

Over the next year, we’ll release more exciting capabilities in the new Project, including resource management, budget analysis, and time and expense tracking. These powerful features will enable you to streamline more complex initiatives and help your business maximize ROI.

Knowledge

We’re excited to announce a brand-new investment area for Microsoft 365—knowledge. Moving your productivity infrastructure to the cloud has many benefits, including cost savings and streamlined operations. But it also unlocks new scenarios. Using AI, Microsoft 365 will now be able to identify, organize, and deliver knowledge across your organization—providing just the right information at just the right time. Productivity isn’t just about being more efficient. It’s also about aggregating and applying the collective knowledge of your organization so that together you can achieve more.

Project Cortex

Today, we’re announcing Project Cortex, the first new service in Microsoft 365 since the launch of Teams. Project Cortex uses AI to create a knowledge network that reasons over your organization’s data and automatically organizes it into shared topics like projects and customers. It also delivers relevant knowledge to people across your organization through topic cards and topic pages in the apps they use every day.

In addition, Project Cortex enables business process efficiency by turning your content into an interactive knowledge repository—with innovations in smart content ingestion—to analyze documents and extract metadata to create sophisticated content models; machine teaching, to allow subject matter experts to teach the system how to understand semi-structured content; and knowledge retrieval, to make it easy for people to access the valuable knowledge that’s so often locked away in documents, conversations, meetings, and videos. Building on the content you already have in SharePoint, Project Cortex connects content across Microsoft 365 and external systems and enables you to manage information and streamline processes with built-in security, compliance, and workflow.

The new Yammer

Yammer has been completely redesigned, with dozens of new capabilities that empower people to connect, build communities, and share knowledge across the organization. The new Yammer delivers a beautiful, intelligent experience across devices and introduces new integrations with Teams, SharePoint, and Outlook. You can now use Yammer to broadcast live and on-demand events with a streamlined production option that uses webcams and desktop sharing. And you can also share video shorts directly from the Yammer mobile app. In addition, we’ve now centralized e-Discovery, data governance, and Yammer administration in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

Microsoft Search

Today, we announced new innovations for Microsoft Search to enhance productivity; empower greater discovery of information, insights, and people; develop search driven applications; and extend the benefits of Microsoft Search to content outside of Microsoft 365. We recognize search works best when it brings together information from across your organization. Now with over 100 new Microsoft Search connectors from Microsoft and our partners, you can consolidate information from disparate system into a single search experience in Microsoft 365.

In addition, you can use our new Graph APIs to develop custom applications on top of Microsoft Search to tailor search to your organizations’ needs. We’re also bringing more powerful search experiences to Microsoft 365, including advanced people search using attributes and skills, video search, acronym search, and semantic search.

Microsoft Stream

Video is an increasingly powerful medium for capturing and sharing knowledge and learning. Microsoft Stream applies AI to unlock the content in video—including meeting recordings—with automatic transcription. AI also powers the new voice enhance feature, allowing you to focus on the spoken word by reducing background noise. And now people can create short videos from mobile devices and share in Yammer, Teams, and PowerApps, mainstreaming video as the new content type for communications and learning.

Workplace Analytics

Workplace Analytics is making it even easier to gain knowledge about the way people work and its impact on business and organizational outcomes. Business leaders will get at-a-glance insights to quickly understand and improve meeting culture, manager practices, organizational networks, and customer relationships. Industry benchmarks help contextualize common patterns that influence productivity, such as focus time and the ability to unplug outside of working hours. We also enriched the analyst toolset. AI-driven process analysis uses key words like “quarterly business review” to shed light on time and resources invested in specific business activities, enabling improvement over time.

Workflow

Workflow innovations empower you to streamline and improve business processes with little or no code. This approach not only saves time and money, it also ensures process automation is done by the people who are closest to the way things actually work.

Power Platform integration with Teams

With Power Platform, users can automate routine tasks, create custom apps, and easily engage with data. Power Platform integration with Teams makes these tools more discoverable and accessible to users and unlocks a conversational approach to streamlining productivity scenarios—from managing approvals directly in chat to pinning a custom app where a team needs it.

Today, we announced new features to enhance these capabilities. Power Apps creators can now publish their apps as Teams apps, and users will be able to pin those apps to their left rail in Teams. We’re also adding new Power Automate triggers and actions, allowing users to streamline the completion of common team and personal tasks, such as setting custom message actions and sending notifications. And coming soon, rich Power BI previews in Teams chat and an enhanced Power BI tab will allow users to see all their data in Teams and effortlessly discuss data, to speed data-driven decision making.

Office Scripts

Office Scripts simplifies clunky processes and automates repetitive tasks so you can work less while doing more. Today, we introduced scripting in Excel, a new process automation feature that allows you to record your actions inside a workbook and save it to a script. The saved script can then be integrated with Power Automate and scheduled to run automatically or integrate with a larger flow. Office Scripts will be available as a public preview by the end of the year.

Security

New AI-powered features make it easy for you to secure your organization’s valuable assets while empowering employees to collaborate freely.

Microsoft Authenticator

Any customer with any Azure AD plan, including a free plan, can now use the Microsoft Authenticator app for secure, passwordless access to both Microsoft and non-Microsoft apps. Passwords continue to be the weakest link in cybersecurity. With Azure AD and Microsoft Authenticator, enterprises can go passwordless for a great user experience and lower support costs while also implementing two-factor or multi-factor authentication (MFA) for greater security. Deploying MFA reduces the risk of phishing and other identity-based attacks by 99.9 percent and is the best thing you can do to improve your security. Customers with more than 150 seats can also now contact Microsoft to set up the capability via FastTrack.

New value in Azure AD

Azure AD Cloud Provisioning now makes it easier to move identities to the cloud by eliminating the need for an on-premises sync server though a lightweight on-premises agent. This enables provisioning from multiple, disconnected on-premises Active Directory (AD) forests and harnesses the power of the cloud to tackle common directory challenges like sync complexity and data transformation logic. This capability addresses one of the top needs for large enterprise customers that manage complex organizations or mergers and acquisitions and enables greater availability and decreases implementation and operation costs.

Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

Microsoft Defender ATP endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities are now available in preview for Mac OS devices. We’ll be adding support for Linux servers next. This is part of our commitment to extending multi-platform coverage in our threat protection solutions. Our customers depend on Microsoft for world-class endpoint protection and EDR capabilities for Windows, and most large organizations manage a complex mix of technology platforms, including several operating systems. They need coverage for the full breadth of their environment. This ongoing investment gives them the breadth of coverage they need, with a single unified view for administrators and security operations professionals, enabling enterprise-wide investigation and response to security incidents.

Application Guard for Office

Now available in private preview, Application Guard for Office provides hardware-level and container-based protection against potentially malicious Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. It utilizes Microsoft Defender ATP to establish whether a document is either malicious or trusted.

Compliance

Simplify and automate risk management with new innovations that use AI as a force multiplier to keep you one step ahead of the increasingly complex compliance requirements and ever-evolving insider threats.

Insider Risk Management

A staggering 53 percent of organizations have experienced an insider attack in the last 12 months. The effort required to identify these risks and violations is not trivial, and it requires effective collaboration across security, human resources (HR), and legal—as well as a balanced approach across privacy and risk management. Today, we announced Insider Risk Management in Microsoft 365 to help organizations quickly identify and remediate insider threats, risks, and code of conduct policy violations across Office, Windows, Azure and third-party apps such as HR systems. Insider Risk Management leverages the Microsoft Graph and other services to intelligently correlate multiple signals to identify hidden patterns and potential risks, and provide real-time insight into file activity, communications sentiment, and abnormal user behaviors. Insider Risk Management includes a set of configurable playbooks tailored specifically for risks—such as digital IP theft and confidentiality breach—to help you effectively identify threats and take action. We also designed for privacy, so display names for risky users can be anonymized by default at early stages of investigation.

Compliance Score

It’s more important than ever to have the knowledge and tools you need to work across compliance and risk management teams to effectively assess and monitor risks. To help you implement more effective data protection controls, we’re announcing the public preview of Microsoft Compliance Score, which enables you to simplify and automate risk assessments. With Microsoft Compliance Score, you can now continuously assess and monitor data protection controls, get clear guidance on how to improve the score, and leverage the built-in control mapping to scale your compliance efforts across regulations and standards.

Even if you’re not an expert in complex regulations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or ISO 27001, you can still quickly learn the actions needed for compliance and contribute towards progress. We also introduced new assessments for California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and for other GDPR-style regulations. Compliance Score is available now in public preview for all Microsoft 365 enterprise plans in the Microsoft 365 compliance center.

Management

With new management innovations, Microsoft 365 puts the cloud and AI to work to help you set-up, secure, monitor, and manage all your devices.

Microsoft Endpoint Manager

Microsoft Endpoint Manager is an integrated solution to centrally and securely manage all the endpoints in your technology estate. Bringing together Microsoft Intune and System Center Configuration Manager functionality and data—plus new intelligent actions and analytics—Endpoint Manager delivers seamless, end-to-end management for Windows, Android and Apple devices, apps, and policies without the complexity of a migration or disruption to productivity. Look for Microsoft Endpoint Manager features and experiences to appear in the product over the coming months. And, to help ensure that all our customers are able to take advantage of Microsoft Endpoint Manager, we’re making Intune available to our existing SCCM customers for Windows PC management. Starting December 1, 2019, you can co-manage these devices in Microsoft Endpoint Manager, and start using cloud-powered features like Autopilot and Desktop Analytics.

Microsoft Productivity Score

Microsoft Productivity Score focuses on two areas: the Employee experience and the Technology experience. Both provide visibility into how your organization works, insights to identify where you can enable improved experiences, and actions you can take to update skills and systems—so everyone can do their best work.

The Employee experience shows you how Microsoft 365 is helping to create a productive and engaged workforce. By quantifying how people are collaborating on content, working from anywhere, developing a meeting culture, and communicating with each other, you can see the different ways that work gets done. Meanwhile, the Technology experience provides insights by assessing policies, device settings, and hardware and application performance within the organizational environment and recommends actions in Microsoft Endpoint Manager.

Managed Meeting Rooms

Productive meetings are essential to success in the modern workplace. Coupled with the rise in remote collaboration, business leaders increasingly associate more effective meetings with having the right meeting room technology and environment. Today, we’re announcing a private preview of Managed Meeting Rooms from Microsoft, a new offer for managing meeting rooms. This cloud-based IT management and security monitoring service ensures that Teams meeting rooms are secured, up to date, and proactively monitored for a great in-room experience. To date, we’ve been working with more than 100 customers to manage more than 1,500 meeting rooms. Now, a private preview is opening this experience to more of you! If you’re interested in participating, let us know.

Global reader

You told us you want to improve your security posture by scoping admin permissions to only those needed to do their jobs. In fact, this is one of our top customer requests. We’re announcing new admin roles in Azure AD and the Microsoft 365 admin center to help you reduce the number of Global admins in your organization. For example, the Global reader role lets an admin view information across Microsoft 365, but does not allow the admin to change any settings or data. Now you can assign the Global reader role to admins in your organization to support reporting, planning, audits, and investigations, without having to grant a higher level of privileges than is necessary. The Global reader role can also be combined with other administrative roles (for example, Exchange admin) to more granularly control and scope the assignment of admin privileges in your organization.

Onboarding Hub

You also told us that you want guidance from Microsoft for improving security and increasing admin efficiency. The Onboarding Hub, in the Microsoft 365 admin center’s setup area, includes new experiences to help you discover, learn about, and use features across Microsoft 365, including Azure AD and other admin portals such as the Security and Compliance Center. We provide intelligent recommendations—based on your current configuration and admin activities—to help you improve your security posture, maintain compliance with data regulations, keep apps up to date, and reduce costs.

New recommendations in the Microsoft 365 admin center (admin.microsoft.com).

Using the Global reader role to access the Onboarding Hub is a powerful and safe way to perform planning and auditing activities for Microsoft 365, as a Global reader can view and assess the recommendations, learn about implementation steps and user impact, and see current administrative assignments without making any tenant or configuration changes.

Office 365 Groups

Office 365 Groups is the membership service that powers collaboration and drives teamwork across Microsoft 365. It’s a core underpinning of more than 20 applications, including Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, Yammer, Microsoft Stream, and more. We’re pleased to announce a number of improvements to the Groups admin experience with new lifecycle management and compliance capabilities, including the ability to quickly create teams for a group, browse and restore deleted groups, edit the group email alias, and use sensitivity labels. You can also enable self-service group creation and management, which empowers users to create teams and Yammer channels that are controlled with guardrails and policies set by IT.

Send us your feedback

Every innovation we make with Microsoft 365, the world’s productivity cloud, is designed to help you and your organization unlock new forms of productivity to achieve more. We’re excited to share these new features with you, and look forward to your feedback and insights.

The post From new Microsoft Teams experiences to the all-new Project Cortex—here’s what’s coming soon to Microsoft 365 appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Here’s a quick summary:

• Windows Virtual Desktop is now in public preview, providing the best virtualized Microsoft 365 experience across devices.
• Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) now supports Mac, extending Microsoft 365 advanced endpoint security across platforms.
• The new Microsoft Threat and Vulnerability Management (TVM) capability in Microsoft Defender ATP will help detect, assess, and prioritize threats across endpoints.
• Office 365 ProPlus will now include the Microsoft Teams app, enabling a new way to work.
• We’re reducing the time it takes to apply Windows 10 feature updates, making it easier to deploy and service Windows 10.
• We’re enhancing Configuration Manager and Microsoft Intune with new insights and deployment options to make it easier to manage your devices across platforms.
• Microsoft 365 admin center is now generally available.

Virtualize Windows 10 and Office 365 on Azure with Windows Virtual Desktop—now in public preview

Today, we’re happy to announce the public preview of Windows Virtual Desktop. Windows Virtual Desktop is the only service that delivers simplified management, multi-session Windows 10, optimizations for Office 365 ProPlus, and support for Remote Desktop Services (RDS) environments in a shared public cloud. With Windows Virtual Desktop, you can deploy and scale your Windows desktops and apps on Azure in minutes, with built-in security and compliance.

For more information about Windows Virtual Desktop or how to get started with the public preview, read the full announcement and watch the new Mechanics video.

Address risks and protect more of your Microsoft 365 devices and endpoints with Microsoft Defender ATP—now in public preview

New today, we’re extending support for our Microsoft Defender threat protection platform to Mac. And because we’re extending support beyond the Windows ecosystem, we’re renaming the platform from Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) to Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). Starting today, Microsoft Defender ATP customers can sign up for a public preview. For more information, visit our Tech Community blog.

We’re also announcing Threat and Vulnerability Management (TVM), a new capability within Microsoft Defender ATP, designed to empower security teams to discover, prioritize, and remediate known vulnerabilities and misconfigurations exploited by threat actors. Using TVM, customers can evaluate the risk-level of threats and vulnerabilities and prioritize remediation based on signals from Microsoft Defender ATP. TVM will be available as a public preview for Microsoft Defender ATP customers within the next month. Learn more about it in our Tech Community blog.

Today’s security announcements are an important milestone in our Microsoft 365 endpoint security journey. For more details, check out Rob Lefferts’s post on the Microsoft Security blog.

Enable a new way to work with Office 365 ProPlus and Teams—starting in March

Starting in March, new installs of Office 365 ProPlus will include the Teams app by default. As a “hub for teamwork,” Teams combines chat, voice, video, files, meetings, and calls into a single, integrated experience.

In addition, the default installation for ProPlus will now be 64 bit, enabling better reliability and more effective use of newer PC hardware. If you have earlier 32-bit installs, a soon-to-be-released in-place upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit Office 365 ProPlus will allow you to upgrade the Office apps without uninstalling and reinstalling.

Reducing the time required for Windows 10 feature updates—starting with version 1709

We made important changes to the Windows update process. Starting with Windows 10 version 1709, devices are updating up to 63 percent faster. Additionally, with the release of Windows 10 version 1703, we’ve seen a 20 percent reduction in operating system and driver stability issues.

Simplify and modernize management with Configuration Manager and Intune

Configuration Manager current branch offers CMPivot for real-time queries and updates to management insights that help with co-management readiness. What’s more, you can now take advantage of new deployment options, including phased deployments and configuring known-folder mapping to OneDrive.

Mobile Device Management (MDM) Security Baselines are now in preview in Intune. These baselines are a group of Microsoft-recommended configuration settings that increase your security posture and operational efficiency and reduce costs. We’re also announcing several new Intune capabilities for unified endpoint management across devices and platforms.

Check out What’s new in Microsoft Intune and Configuration Manager for more detailed information on our broad unified endpoint management investments.

Manage Microsoft 365 with a new admin center—rolling out now

We’re also announcing the that the new Microsoft 365 admin center, previously in preview, will become the default experience for all Microsoft 365 and Office 365 admins. Admin.microsoft.com is your single entry point for managing your Microsoft 365 services and includes new features like guided setup experiences, improved groups management, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for admins, and more.

For more information on this new release, check out the detailed post on the Microsoft 365 Tech Community blog.

More at Microsoft Ignite: The Tour in Amsterdam

We’re sharing more on each of these announcements this week at Microsoft Ignite: The Tour in Amsterdam. I’ll be there to co-present a session with Jeremy Chapman on “Simplifying IT with Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus.” You’ll have a chance to learn more from many of my colleagues in the teamwork, modern desktop, and security sessions. I hope to see you there!

Editor’s note 3/21/2019:
Blog post was updated to correct information regarding Configuration Manager current branch.

The post Helping IT reduce costs, increase security, and boost employee productivity appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Here’s a look at what’s new in February.

Stay ahead of threats and collaborate securely

New features and services help you better manage a complex threat landscape and communicate and collaborate securely.

Extend your security team’s capability with Microsoft Threat Experts—Our new managed threat-hunting service, called Microsoft Threat Experts, helps you proactively hunt and prioritize threats to get the most out of Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). The service provides access to world-class experts who can help you work through tough investigation challenges with the new Ask a Threat Expert button. Go to your Windows Defender ATP settings to apply for the public preview.

Empower healthcare professionals to securely communicate and collaborate—This month, we announced new capabilities in Microsoft Teams that enable secure messaging and collaboration workflows for healthcare organizations. Priority notifications enable clinicians to focus on urgent messages to manage patient care. In addition, the ability to integrate FHIR-enabled electronic health records (EHR) data with Teams enables clinicians to securely access patient records, chat with other team members, and even start a video meeting—all in one hub for teamwork. These capabilities are now in private preview; visit the Microsoft 365 and health page and partner site to learn more about how Teams and Microsoft 365 can empower your healthcare teams.

Move confidently to the modern desktop and cloud with Desktop App Assure and Microsoft FastTrack—Our new service from Microsoft FastTrack, Desktop App Assure, provides app compatibility services for Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus. FastTrack also now offers guidance on how to configure Exchange Online Protection, Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection, Office 365 Message Encryption, and Data Loss Prevention policies. These services are now globally available to eligible customers with more than 150 seats at no additional cost. Sign in to Microsoft FastTrack and complete a Request for Assistance form to get started.

Get security alerts for your Microsoft account on your phone—Receive security notifications for important events on your personal Microsoft account now via the Microsoft Authenticator app. When you receive a push notification, you can quickly view your account activity and take actions to protect your account if needed. Microsoft Authenticator can also be used to add two-step verification to your account for added security. To get started, download the Microsoft Authenticator app and add your personal account.

Manage tasks and capture data with ease

New features expand capabilities to easily access all your apps and files, capture and convert data, and add context to your tasks.

Jump into your work quickly with the new Office app for Windows 10—The new, free Office app provides a simple experience to get started with and get the most out of Office. Anyone who signs in with a work, school, or personal Microsoft Account can use it to quickly access all the apps available to them and their most relevant files and documents. Organizations can also take advantage of the ability to integrate third-party apps, enable users to search for documents and people across the organization, and customize the experience with their own branding. The Office app can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store, requires a current version of Windows 10, and works with any Office 365 subscription, Office 2019, Office 2016, and Office.

Add data to Excel directly from a photo—Using the Excel app, you can take a picture of a printed data table on your Android device and automatically convert the picture into a fully editable table in Excel. This new image recognition functionality eliminates the need for you to manually enter hardcopy data. This capability is starting to roll out for the Excel Android app with iOS support coming soon.

Quickly add photos and files to tasks in Microsoft To-Do—Attach files and photos to help make tasks more actionable with added context. This highly requested feature is now available on all platforms and syncs across your devices, so you can take your new file-attached tasks on the go.

Other updates

• New one-time passcodes (OTP) from Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) make sharing and collaboration seamless for any user with any account.
• Azure AD now supports automated user provisioning from Workday, enabling fast and efficient identity creation, so employees can access their Microsoft 365 apps and all other critical resources on day one.
• Starting this month, the Teams desktop app will be installed along with the rest of the Office 365 ProPlus apps for all new installs.
• Updates to the SharePoint Migration Tool make it even easier to bring your information to the cloud, with improvements like the ability to migrate web parts, pages, and site navigation.

The post New to Microsoft 365 in February—advancing security and empowering a modern workplace appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

Today, we are announcing upcoming capabilities that, along with our recent investments, combine the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning with content stored in OneDrive for Business and SharePoint to help you be more productive, make more informed decisions, and keep more secure.

Be more productive

A key to being productive is leveraging existing content so you’re not reinventing the wheel. Historically this has been challenging due to the exponential growth of digital content, particularly with image, video, and audio files. Until now, these rich file types have been cumbersome to manage and painful to sift through to find what you need, when you need it.

Video and audio transcription—Beginning later this year, automated transcription services will be natively available for video and audio files in OneDrive and SharePoint using the same AI technology available in Microsoft Stream. While viewing a video or listening to an audio file, a full transcript (improving both accessibility and search) will show directly in our industry-leading viewer, which supports over 320 different file types. This will help you utilize your personal video and audio assets, as well as collaborate with others to produce your best work.

Once you’re ready to make a video broadly available across the organization, you can upload and publish to Microsoft Stream. You’ll continue to get transcription services plus other AI driven capabilities, including in-video face detection and automatic captions. Importantly, your audio and video content never leaves the Microsoft Cloud; it is not passed through potentially costly and insecure third-party services.

Searching audio, video, and images—Announced last September, we are unlocking the value of photos and images stored in OneDrive and SharePoint. Using native, secure AI, we determine where photos were taken, recognize objects, and extract text in photos. This recognition and text extraction allows you to search for images as easily as you search for documents. For example, you could search a folder of scanned receipts for the receipt that mentions “sushi.” Video and audio files also become fully searchable thanks to the transcription services described earlier.

Intelligent files recommendations—Later this year, we’ll introduce a new files view to OneDrive and the Office.com home page to recommend relevant files to you. Suggested files are based on the intelligence of the Microsoft Graph and its understanding of how you work, who you work with, and activity on content shared with you across Microsoft 365. This deep understanding of user behavior and relationships among coworkers is unique to Microsoft 365 and continues to be enriched as you collaborate on content in OneDrive and SharePoint.

AI also makes it easier to create new documents by reusing existing content. The Tap feature in Word 2016 and Outlook 2016 intelligently recommends content stored in OneDrive and SharePoint by understanding the context of what you are working on. This allows you to leverage and repurpose a paragraph, table, graphic, chart, or more from another file while working on a new document or email.

Make more informed decisions

OneDrive and SharePoint make your life easier thanks to innovative AI that helps you make more informed decisions while working with content.

File insights—Earlier this year, we rolled out an updated file card, providing access statistics for any file stored in OneDrive and SharePoint. This allows you to see who has looked at the file and what they have been doing, and it helps you decide your next action. Later this year, we’ll bring these valuable file statistics directly into the native Office application experience.

Additionally, we’ll introduce additional insights to the file card with “Inside look,” giving you important information at a glance—including time to read and key points from the document, so you can choose to dive in deeper or save it for later.

Intelligent sharing—Later this year, you’ll have the option to easily share relevant content with meeting attendees. For instance, if you just presented a PowerPoint presentation, you’ll be prompted to share it with the other attendees once the meeting is over. In the OneDrive mobile app, we’ll automatically prompt you to share photos taken during the same meeting, perhaps of a whiteboard where you brainstormed new ideas with your colleagues—all based on your Outlook calendar. This type of real-world intelligence allows you to quickly keep everyone informed and move on to your next task and is exclusively available when you store your content in OneDrive and SharePoint.

Data insights—Earlier this year at the SharePoint Virtual Summit, we showed you how you could immediately enrich your OneDrive and SharePoint content with intelligence by leveraging the flexibility of Microsoft Flow and the power of Azure Cognitive Services. Since these services are powered by Microsoft Azure, you can get sentiment analysis, key word extraction, and even custom image recognition—all while keeping your content secure in the Microsoft Cloud and away from potentially costly and insecure third-party services. Additionally, you can use information provided by these cognitive services to set up custom workflows to organize images, trigger notifications, or invoke more extensive business processes directly in OneDrive and SharePoint with deep integration to Microsoft Flow.

Keep more secure

When your files are stored in OneDrive and SharePoint, AI also helps to protect your content, keep you compliant, and thwart malicious attacks.

OneDrive files restore—Earlier this year, we released OneDrive files restore including integration with Windows Defender Antivirus for business and personal users to protect you from ransomware attacks by identifying breaches and guiding you through remediation and file recovery. With a full 30 days of file history and sophisticated machine learning to help us spot potential attacks early, OneDrive gives you peace of mind for every file you store. Best of all, moving your files to OneDrive has never been easier thanks to Known Folder Move.

Intelligent compliance—In addition to being able to apply native data loss prevention (DLP) policies and conduct native eDiscovery searches on textual content stored in OneDrive and SharePoint, with the innovations discussed above, we’re making it even easier to use these key compliance capabilities with audio, video, and images later this year. Soon you’ll be able to leverage the text extracted from photos and audio/video transcriptions to automatically apply these policies and protect this content.

Get started

As you can see, by leveraging Microsoft’s industry-leading investments in AI we believe we have made OneDrive and SharePoint in Microsoft 365 the smartest place to store your content. In fact, Microsoft is recognized as a Leader by Gartner in both their Magic Quadrant for Content Collaboration Platforms and Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms reports. It was also recognized by Forrester in both their cloud and hybrid Forrester Wave™: Enterprise File Sync and Share Platforms Q4 2017 reports.

You can start realizing these benefits and more by moving your content to OneDrive and SharePoint today, just as Fortune 500 customers MGM Resorts International, Walmart, Johnson Controls International, and Textron are doing. You’ll automatically get more value as we continue to invest in these and other new AI capabilities to help you achieve more.

Microsoft has a bold vision to transform content collaboration for the modern workplace inclusive of files, dynamic web sites and portals, streaming video, AI, and mixed reality, while reducing costs and improving compliance and security. Be sure to join us at Microsoft Ignite from September 24–28, 2018 in Orlando, Florida, or on-demand, where we’ll continue to unveil how AI will accelerate content collaboration in the modern workplace.

Gartner, Inc., Magic Quadrant for Content Collaboration Platforms, Monica Basso, Michael Woodbridge, Karen Hobert, July 3, 2018.
Gartner, Inc., Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms, Karen Hobert, Michael Woodbridge, Joe Mariano, and Gavin Tay, October 5, 2017.

Gartner Disclaimer:
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

The post Microsoft 365 is the smartest place to store your content appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

With an Office 365 Home or Office 365 Personal subscription, you already get best-in-class apps like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel as well as powerful cloud services like OneDrive and Outlook.com. Office 365 lets you create, share, and communicate anywhere, on any device.

The new protection capabilities offer subscribers additional peace of mind with:

• File recovery from malicious attacks like ransomware.
• Tools to help keep your information secure and private.
• Advanced protection from viruses and cybercrime.

Recover files from malicious attacks like ransomware

Ransomware has become an increasingly pervasive attack method in which cybercriminals “lock up” and prevent access to files in an effort to extort money from their victims. To help protect customers we are introducing two new capabilities that allow you to recover your files if they are affected by a malicious attack like ransomware.

Files Restore—We’re bringing our powerful Files Restore feature from OneDrive for Business to your personal OneDrive account, so it doesn’t matter if they’re work or personal files—they’re protected in OneDrive. Files Restore allows you to restore your entire OneDrive to a previous point in time within the last 30 days. You can use this feature to recover from an accidental mass delete, file corruption, ransomware, or another catastrophic event.

With Files Restore, you can recover from an accidental mass delete, file corruption, ransomware, or another catastrophic event.

Ransomware detection & recovery—Office 365 can now detect ransomware attacks and help you restore your OneDrive to a point before files were compromised, so you don’t have to submit to cybercriminal demands. We know this is important to our customers and a top request on UserVoice. If an attack is detected, you will be alerted through an email, mobile, or desktop notification and guided through a recovery process where you’ll find the date and time of attack preselected in Files Restore, making the process simple and easy to use. As these threats evolve, we are continuously improving detection capabilities to help keep you safe from the most advanced ransomware.

Notification of ransomware detected on your mobile phone, so you can immediately take action and restore your files.

Tools to help keep your information secure and private

Sending confidential or personal information online, like tax documents, family budgets, or a new business proposal, can be worrisome. Whether you’re sending an email or sharing a link, you want your information to reach only the intended recipients. Office 365 is adding three new capabilities to help keep your data secure and private in these cases.

Password protected sharing links—We’re adding an additional security option for links you share in OneDrive. You will now be able to set and require a password to access a shared file or folder. This prevents others from accessing your files if your intended recipient accidentally forwards or shares the link.

Set a password to access shared files or folders for an additional layer of protection.

Email encryption—Email encryption in Outlook.com offers an added layer of protection and ensures end-to-end encryption of your email. Unlike Outlook.com, some email providers don’t encrypt their connection, making it easy for hackers to intercept and read your communication. When you use Outlook.com email encryption, your email remains encrypted over a secure connection—minimizing the threat of your information being intercepted or leaked to cybercriminals.

Encryption is particularly useful in cases where it is unclear what level of security your intended recipients’ email providers offer. Recipients receive a link to a trusted Office 365 webpage where they can choose to receive a one-time passcode or re-authenticate with a trusted provider before viewing the email. Outlook.com email recipients who view the encrypted email in Outlook.com, the Outlook for iOS and Android app, or the Windows Mail app can read and reply just like they can with any other email—no extra steps needed. When composing an email in Outlook.com, sensitive information like social security numbers can be detected to provide you with a suggestion to send with encryption.

Prevent forwarding—You can now restrict your email recipients from forwarding or copying emails you send from Outlook.com. Additionally, Microsoft Office documents you attach to these emails are encrypted even after downloading, so if the recipient shares or forwards your attachment, the recipient of the forwarded email will not be able to open the attachment. Emails sent with the prevent forwarding option are also encrypted.

Select Encrypt and Prevent Forwarding so recipients can’t forward or copy the email.

Advanced protection from viruses and cybercrime

In October, we announced advanced link checking and attachment scanning in Outlook.com to protect you from previously unseen viruses and phishing scams in real-time. As cybercriminals resort to tricking people into giving away their sign-in credentials or downloading viruses through malicious emails and links, these advanced protections help keep Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal subscribers safe with enterprise-grade security.

Advanced link checking in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—We know it’s also important to provide this advanced protection in other places you encounter links. Starting later this year, links you click in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will also be checked in real-time to determine if the destination website is likely to download malware onto your computer or if it’s related to a phishing scam. If the link is suspicious, you will be redirected to a warning screen recommending you don’t access the site.

If you click an unsafe link, you’ll see a warning screen recommending not to continue.

Additional security protecting your account

Today’s announcements have focused on new, advanced protection capabilities for our Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal subscribers. However, those who use our free services also have strong protections in place. This includes robust Microsoft account security like two-factor authentication and anomalous sign-in detection. In addition, all Outlook.com attachments and links in emails are scanned for known viruses and phishing threats. OneDrive scans files on download for known threats, provides file versioning for all file types, and sends notifications if a mass file deletion is detected. We also implement industry standards with encryption at rest and in transit. These core capabilities align with the Microsoft promise to offer a high degree of security and protection for all our users.

Availability and feedback

We’re excited to provide these new advanced protection capabilities to our subscribers. Ransomware detection & recovery and Files Restore start rolling out today and will be available to all Office 365 subscribers soon. Password protected sharing links, email encryption, and prevent forwarding will start rolling out in the coming weeks. Advanced link checking and advanced attachment scanning is already available in Outlook.com, and advanced link checking in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will be coming the second half of 2018. Visit our support page to learn more about all the advanced protection features included in Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal subscriptions.

Let us know what you think of our new features. Share your thoughts and ideas in the OneDrive UserVoice, Outlook UserVoice, Word UserVoice, Excel UserVoice, and PowerPoint UserVoice.

The post Defend yourself from cybercrime with new Office 365 capabilities appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.

The evolution of technology and cloud innovation are democratizing data and in turn fueling digital transformation. Embracing every facet of this digital transformation offers organizations an opportunity to better engage with customers, empower employees, and optimize the creation and delivery of products and services. However, with the increased use of personal data to customize user experiences, new compliance laws—such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)—are a logical policy component of our technology landscape. Microsoft 365 offers a complete cloud solution to help you with GDPR compliance, while Compliance Manager helps you assess and manage your compliance risk.

Compliance promotes innovation by building customer trust in technology

At its core, the GDPR strengthens personal privacy rights for individuals in the EU and requires organizations to provide individuals control over their personal data. To build and maintain the trust needed to manage customer relationships through technology, organizations need tighter controls over what personal data they hold and how they manage and protect this data. Systems and processes need to be modernized to prevent the unlawful use of data, accommodate personal data requests by individuals, and provide notifications of breaches in a timely manner.

Businesses are looking to the cloud for added value

Our research suggests that companies not only see the long-term value of building trust by protecting customer data, but in fact believe their investments in compliance will positively impact other areas of their business—like productivity and collaboration.* When IT decision makers in Europe and the U.S. were asked to identify their top concern in achieving GDPR compliance, “protecting customer data” was the #1 response while avoiding fines ranked #8. More than half of respondents said the GDPR brings added benefits like collaboration, productivity, and security. Cloud solutions like Microsoft 365 are a big reason that businesses see opportunity in compliance. Of those surveyed, 41 percent said they are likely to move more of their company’s infrastructure to the cloud to become compliant. And among leading cloud vendors, Microsoft was identified as most trusted by a wide margin (28 percent), followed by IBM (16 percent), Google (11 percent), and Amazon (10 percent). All told, 92 percent of IT decision makers in companies that store data primarily in the cloud identified as being confident in their GDPR readiness, compared with just 65 percent of those who prefer to store data on-premises.

Microsoft 365 is a complete cloud solution for GDPR compliance

The Microsoft Cloud is uniquely positioned to help you meet your GDPR compliance obligations, with the largest certified compliance portfolio, services architected to be secure by design, and the most extensive global datacenter footprint in the industry.

Our cloud solution is built for power, scale, and flexibility. Microsoft 365 brings together Office 365, Windows 10, and Enterprise Mobility + Security—offering a rich set of integrated solutions that leverage AI to help you assess and manage your compliance risk, protect your most important data, and streamline your processes.

Assess and manage your compliance risk with Compliance Manager Preview

Because achieving organizational compliance can be very challenging, understanding your compliance risk should be your first priority. Today, we’re making that easier with the preview of Compliance Manager.

Compliance Manager is a cross–Microsoft Cloud services solution designed to help organizations meet complex compliance obligations like the GDPR. It performs a real-time risk assessment that reflects your compliance posture against data protection regulations when using Microsoft Cloud services, along with recommended actions and step-by-step guidance. Learn more about Compliance Manager and how to access the preview.

Protect your most sensitive data

Beyond understanding your compliance risk, protecting both personal data and other sensitive content is key.

Microsoft information protection solutions provide an integrated classification, labeling, and protection experience, enabling more persistent governance and protection of sensitive data wherever it is—across devices, apps, cloud services, and on-premises.

For example, Office 365 Advanced Data Governance leverages machine assisted insights to help you automatically classify, set policies, and protect the data in Office 365 that is most important to your organization.

Azure Information Protection scanner addresses hybrid and on-premises scenarios by allowing you to configure policies to automatically label and protect documents on a Windows Server file share. Read “Azure Information Protection scanner in public preview” to learn more about the scanner.

Microsoft also provides external threat protection solutions to prevent and detect cyber-attacks across workloads—whether on devices using Windows 10, on-premises and Azure-based infrastructure, or with our cloud services like Office 365.

One of these solutions, Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, is built into Windows 10 and helps spot most advanced targeted attacks by giving visibility into threats on your device, insights into the scope of the threat, and one-click response capabilities to isolate the threat immediately.

Streamline your processes

The GDPR requires organizations to be able to identify and locate personal data. Having a scalable investigation and audit-ready processes in place to meet requirements is paramount.

Content Search, a feature of Office 365 eDiscovery, makes it easy to search Office 365 for data related to individuals. Since the results of this search could result in large quantities of data or data that is confidential to the organization, machine learning in Advanced eDiscovery can be used to minimize the data so that you are only providing the relevant data in accordance with the GDPR.

Finally, Customer Lockbox provides an audit trail showing when personal data is accessed during service operations.

Get started today on your GDPR journey with Microsoft

No matter where you are in your GDPR efforts, the Microsoft Cloud and our intelligent compliance solutions in Microsoft 365 can help you on your journey to GDPR compliance.

—Ron Markezich

*Online survey conducted by YouGov PLC between 10/31/2017 and 11/8/2017. Sample size: 1,542 IT decision makers.

The post Microsoft 365 helps businesses increase trust and innovation through compliance with Compliance Manager Preview appeared first on Microsoft 365 Blog.