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With many employees continuing to work from home during the lockdown, a new service from bluedog Security Monitoring promises a “fast and low-cost way for companies to monitor remote devices and manage their cybersecurity”.
The Microsoft Office 365 monitoring service can detect risks ranging from suspicious account logins and data downloads to phishing emails arriving in an employee’s inbox. The service – which bluedog says is the only one of its type that is overseen by a live cybersecurity team – starts at just £1 per user per month and can be switched on remotely.
The bluedog service integrates with the Azure Active Directory and matches the company’s internal network data with its Office 365 usage to identify abnormal behaviour. Any suspicious incidents will automatically alert the team at its security operations centre who can then investigate and act upon it.
Launched in 2019, bluedog aims to revolutionise the cyber security market by making monitoring services accessible to businesses of all sizes. Its co-founder Paul Lomax says the Office 365 monitoring service was developed before the lockdown but its launch has been timely.
“The sudden switch to home-working has caused a headache for many companies as it is very difficult to monitor devices which are not on the company premises,” he explains. “Our Office 365 monitoring service offers a quick and easy way to effectively bring these into the network from a security perspective.
“It will also detect breaches of cloud-based systems which would not trigger conventional defences such as anti-virus solutions and firewalls. The service highlights unusual login locations or lateral movement so the team will be able to spot the attacker navigating across the network.
“Having a human on hand to check and interpret data can make all the difference in circumstances like this. Our Office 365 monitoring service is the only one of its type that is backed by an expert team who have full sight of all alerts and can make an informed decision.”
The service also allows companies to see which files and emails have been accessed, downloaded, deleted and from which account and location so they can check if data has been stolen. To ensure companies’ privacy, bluedog is only able to see the filenames and locations and not the contents of files.
According to the Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2020, which was carried out before the lockdown, staff in 53% of businesses regularly use their own laptops or devices. “The use of employees’ own devices has long been a problem for businesses,” said Lomax. “However, with home working likely to become the norm in the foreseeable future, they now need to rethink their IT security. Microsoft Office 365 monitoring offers a low-cost and convenient solution for the post-Covid world.”
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