Microsoft has just announced new security features that will be available with an Office 365 Home or Office 365 Personal subscription. Office 365 is already great value for the 1TB of OneDrive storage, but consumers who subscribe to the cloud productivity suite will get new protection capabilities including File recovery, advanced protection from viruses and more.
The most interesting addition is probably the Files Restore feature, which recently rolled out to OneDrive for Business users. “Files Restore allows you to restore your entire OneDrive to a previous point in time within the last 30 days, explained Kirk Koenigsbauer, Corporate Vice President for Office. “You can use this feature to recover from an accidental mass delete, file corruption, ransomware, or another catastrophic event.”
Being able to recover all your files stored in OneDrive is great, but Microsoft is also adding ransomware protection to the cloud storage service. If OneDrive detects an attack, Office 365 subscribers will be immediately notified through email and push notifications and receive instructions to recover their files.
If you sometimes need to share sensitive files with other, Office 365 will also add the option to use password protected sharing links when sharing OneDrive files. Users will be able to set expiration dates before sharing the files, as seen below:
Outlook.com is also getting new security features including email encryption and an option to prevent email forwarding. When you select “Encrypt and Prevent Forwarding” before sending an email, recipients won’t be able to forward or copy it, and Office documents that are attached in the email will also be encrypted.
Files Restore and Ransomware detection start rolling out today to Office 365 subscribers, while Password protected sharing links, email encryption, and Prevent Forwarding will be available in the coming weeks. Overall, Microsoft is giving great incentives for Outlook.com and Onedrive users to upgrade to Office 365, but those who don’t will still have access to basic security features such as two-factor authentication, anomalous sign-in detection as well as link checking and attachment scanning in Outlook.com. Do you think Office 365 is even better value with these new security features? Sound off in the comments below.
