Microsoft starts rolling out Office 365 Advanced Security Management for enterprises

Microsoft today is starting to release its Office 365 Advanced Security Management tools to companies that subscribe to the Office 365 Enterprise E5 service tier. Companies paying for other Office 365 enterprise subscriptions can access the new tools for an addition $3 per user per month.

First detailed in February, Advanced Security Management learns about typical Office 365 usage behavior for large numbers of people and can then identify anomalies.

“In addition, Advanced Security Management incorporates Microsoft’s insights into the threat landscape that are the result of operating a range of services at massive worldwide scale,” the Office team wrote in a blog post.

It also lets admins set policies for the kinds of things that users can do. Alerts can be triggered when those policies are violated, and unwanted behavior can be stopped.

The release follows Microsoft’s acquisition of cloud access security broker Adallom last year. The Adallom technology forms the basis of the Cloud App Security service, and, in turn, Cloud App Security powers Office 365 Advanced Security Management.

An app discovery dashboard for showing how people are using hundreds of cloud services will become available in Advanced Security Management in the future. But the service will also go further and show admins which services are being given access to Office 365.

“Advanced Security Management shows which apps are connected to Office 365 in their environment, who is using them and the permissions they have,” the Office 365 team wrote. “For example, if a user grants a scheduling application access to their Office 365 calendar data, IT will be able to see the details of the connection and revoke that application’s permissions with one click if they deem it a security risk.”