ICR and MFA Implementation

ICR and MFA Implementation

Microsoft 365 Backup and Hardened security with Multifactor Authentication.

The clue is in the name and provides a second level of security to a device only you have access to, your Mobile Phone.

There is no MFA solution that can’t be hacked. Anyone claiming that their solution is unhackable is either lying to you or naive.

MFA provides a secondary perimeter of security making it more difficult to hack your account but not impossible.

Sorry to burst any bubbles but “they” are.

The current vogue is to to deploy Ransomware. The encryption of data requesting a Ransom is Paid to unlock data.

You need to make it as difficult as possible for criminals to access or steal your data. Multi Factor or 2 Factor Authentication is a step in the right direction.

Add the misconception that Data Transferred to the Cloud does not need to be backed up. This will cost you or your business.

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Complex Passwords are a good policy to adopt but how complex are yours?

Every time you sign in to an untrusted device while you have two-step verification turned on, you’ll get a security code in email or on your phone, making sure you are you.

It is always worthwhile bringing this subject to the foreground. “How secure is your password?”

I have distributed previously and spoken to clients regarding the importance of secure Passwords.

As we more more and more to online services Microsoft 365 and Browser Delivered applications Passwords alone do not provide the level of security necessary.

Here are my comments previously:

We all know that using birthdates, a child’s name or a pets name is a recipe for disaster. Using simple brute force tactics passwords of this nature can be guessed or gleaned from social network pages such as Facebook. Also using passwords which have less than 8 characters makes the task easier to hack into any of your accounts.

I appreciate remembering a random string of characters is not easy however there are ways to remember. You can make a password memorable to you and hide the true meaning to a third party viewing it. I touched on the use of names and birthdates. You can use these if you mix things up.

Example

Ben was born on the 1^st June 1979. He decides on a password of 01061979. This would be an easy password to attack and succeed (0.025 seconds) using brute force. In this case a hacker would start at 00000000 through to 99999999.

Too weak for a password he decides ben01061979. This now has a good long password, greater than 8 characters, and would take 12 months to crack – potentially. A little knowledge would start an undesirable to use his name and birthdate and may crack this password in less time.

Uppercase and lowercase. Using a password along the same scheme we can look at Ben01061979. This has the potential of taking 412 years to brute force attack however a little knowledge of Ben and we could reduce this considerably.

Don’t forget /?!#- Adding any of these characters to a passwords greatly reduces the chance of a password being cracked. Ben01061979! Shows a potential time of 344,000 years.

And More

Let’s stretch this out further. 1t 1s n0t D1ff1cult to mak3 a pa55word hard t0 crack 0r gu355. I am hoping you get the idea. Therefore if we take the last iteration of password and apply the same rules, B3nO1O61979! We can see that the password would be difficult to guess, only Ben knows the rules how the password is made, it is 12 characters long and difficult to guess even with knowledge of Ben and his birthday. This also shows a value of 344,000 years to crack which is no improvement however knowledge of Ben and his birth date is obscured within to protect against guesses.

The time taken to crack passwords are obtained from www. howsecureismypassword.net

Play with your current passwords, the website does not capture or keep any data inserted.

Infinite Cloud Retention

Data Backup by another name.

When we look at Infinite Cloud Retention (ICR) we think “Why a different name”. Historically we took a backup to a tape with a defined storage capacity or a Network Attached Storage (NAS) unit also with a defined maximum capacity.

Now our data is “In the Cloud” using Microsoft 365 and other services we have almost unlimited storage available to us, if we pay for it.

We tend to store anything and everything with no thought to the “what if” it was lost.

Infinite Cloud Retention protects against data losses due to Hacks and Ransomeware. it also protects against User Error Deletions, User Corrupted Input and Rouge Employees.

The replication cycle takes a copy of your current data every 8 hours. In worst case you snapshot back 8 hours and a data retention of 1 year.

What can be placed in Infinite Cloud Retention?

Office/Microsoft 365’s Exchange Online, Calendar, Contacts, all OneDrive file types, OneNote data in Sharepoint and OneDrive Document libraries, Sharepoint Sites, Custom Site Collections, Team Sites.

Cross-user restore:

Restore data from one Microsoft 365 user account into another.

Non-destructive restore process:

Quickly identify and recover individual objects or entire accounts with related records and folder structure intact.

Retain user data:

Save money and effort by preserving inactive Microsoft 365 user data with SaaS Protection for as long as you need it.

In Summary

Placing Data into a Cloud service needs to be planned and considered.

Deploying additional access security with MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication).

Ensuring Data Backup via an ICR (Infinite Cloud Rention) reducing the chance of data loss.