During Microsoft Ignite today, Microsoft expanded the Office 2016 preview program to all Office users everywhere (download it here). Office 2016 is expected to be released later this Fall and the company is giving us a glimpse of what’s new for businesses. Take a look below for the new security, compliance, and deployment features for businesses:
- Data Loss Protection (DLP). DLP is now available in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. IT admins can centrally create, manage and enforce policies for content authoring and document sharing. End users will see policy tips or sharing restrictions when the apps detect a potential policy violation.
- Outlook Multi-factor authentication. Multi-factor authentication now available in Outlook through integration with the Active Directory Authentication Library (ADAL).
- Information Rights Management (IRM). IRM protection is now extended to Visio files, enabling both online and offline protection of Visio diagrams.
- Better network traffic management. New Background Intelligence Transfer Service (BITS) helps prevent congestion on the network. BITS throttles back the use of bandwidth when another critical network traffic is present.
- Enhanced distribution management. Improved integration with ConfigMgr allows IT admins to efficiently download and distribute monthly Office updates using the native ConfigMgr features.
- Flexible update management. Admins can now manage the pace at which they receive feature updates and bug fixes while continuing to receive regular security updates.
- Simplified activation management. New controls in the Office 365 Admin Portal allows admins to manage device activations across users.
Further reading: Microsoft, Microsoft Ignite, Office 2016
