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Microsoft Power BI and Office 365 analytics

Microsoft Power BI and Office 365 analytics

Microsoft Power BI and Office 365 analytics

As machine learning, digital storage, and analytics software get more advanced, data is becoming more valuable than ever. Even businesses that don’t rely on data to operate are starting to find ways to get more value out of their information. Microsoft’s newest platform is an excellent example of that — and it’s free!

What is Power BI?

Released in the spring of 2016, Power BI is Microsoft’s business analytics platform. Regardless of whether or not data is stored within a Microsoft platform, connecting Power BI to a database allows you to create detailed graphs, charts, maps, and more. For example, if you upload sales records, dragging and dropping two columns is all it takes to map out where your product sees the most demand.

Recently, Microsoft announced a brand new feature for business owners who want to get more value out of their software subscriptions. The Office 365 adoption content pack collects information about how your employees use Microsoft productivity software, and feeds it directly into Power BI’s analytics. There are four types of insights you can work with:

Adoption

These metrics give you visibility into how much each O365 platform is being used. You may be paying for OneDrive accounts for the entire organization, only for Power BI to reveal that less than a quarter of your team is using it. Compare enabled users and active users to get a clearer picture of your investments.

Communication

You can also see exactly how employees are using communication solutions. If nearly everyone on the team is accessing Skype for Business from a mobile data connection, it might be time to reduce your investments in cellular-based minutes.

Collaboration

Microsoft has several collaboration platforms, and without proper guidance, employees are likely to use the easiest one rather than the best one. Power BI shows you how much time users spend time in their own Word, PowerPoint, and SharePoint documents compared to the time they spend in documents from colleagues. This shows you which platforms encourage the most collaboration and which ones are struggling.

Activation

– The activation insights give you under-the-hood visibility into which versions of O365 users are running, and what devices they use to access them. That may seem like trivial information, but it can have huge impacts on cyber security.

Power BI comes in three different plans: Desktop, Pro, and Premium. Best of all, both the Desktop plan and the Office 365 adoption content pack are totally free. If you like what you see, consider enlisting us to set up and optimize either a Pro or Premium Power BI deployment — we’re only a phone call away!

Published with permission from TechAdvisory.org. Source.

Dropsuite:

Dropsuite is a cloud software platform enabling businesses and organizations globally to easily backup, recover and protect their important business information including emails, contacts, calendars and OneDrive/Sharepoint files. Compliant email backup and archive system with a 10-year retention policy.

Vade Secure:

Vade Secure is an AI-based email security solution to improve security for Office 365 and block advanced phishing, spear phishing, and advanced malware threats. Vade Secure analyzes emails, webpages, attachments, and images with machine learning and deep learning algorithms that are trained to detect behaviors and anomalies common to advanced email threats.

Office Protect:

Office Protect is a service that’s designed to help you secure your Microsoft 365 tenant. Using our powerful in-house security software, our analysts actively monitor for threats, investigate alerts, eliminate false positives, and provide guided response and remediation. Protects against account break-ins, data exfiltration, business email compromise, phishing, internal threats, lateral movement, ransomware, and attacks by nation states.

Dark Cubed:

Dark Cubed focuses on real-time monitoring, threat intelligence, predictive analytics, elegant dashboard, streamlined workflow, executive reporting and active blocking. This is another layer of security that integrates with the firewall.

ThreatLocker:

ThreatLocker is a zero-trust endpoint security tool giving companies control over what software can run, by whom, and what data can be accessed.

It keeps a full detailed audit of what applications are used and data accessed/transferred/deleted and by what users (signature tracking, etc.) If something unusual happens, such as a signature change, or a user opens an application that is out of their normal routine the administrator is alerted. This is a crucial tool in identifying malware threats, as well as helping organizations identify if users are accessing applications and/or data/ files they should not be.

ThreatLocker provides a solution that allows businesses to control the content that runs on their network. Unlike AntiVirus software ThreatLocker is not looking for known viruses or malware. ThreatLocker uses a complex set of rules to determine what can be executed on a network and stops anything that has not been approved before it can even execute.

Huntress:

Huntress is a supplement to SentinelOne. Hackers are becoming more sophisticated, and Huntress actively seeks out these threat actors with a "defend forward" mentality. This software combines both advanced security tools along with human intervention to ensure even the most advanced hackers can't penetrate your network.

SentinelOne:

SentinelOne is a comprehensive enterprise security platform that provides threat detection, hunting, and response features that enable organizations to discover vulnerabilities and protect IT operations. SentinelOne integrates static artificial intelligence (AI) to provide real-time endpoint protection and reduce false positives that derail investigations or make threat detection a capital-intensive process. This will replace Webroot in your current environment.