- Microsoft 365 E5 Suite Features
- Microsoft 365 E5 Developer
- Microsoft 365 E5 Security Pricing
- Microsoft 365 E5 Security
- Microsoft 365 E5 Security Features
- See Full List On Microsoft.com
Microsoft 365 Enterprise plans not only mirror the traditional Office 365 E3/E5 plans but also add in a Windows 10 Enterprise license along with EMS features. These plans would be an 'upgrade' from the Office 365 E3/E5 plans and include critical security features like Azure Information Protection, Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection,. With Office 365 Enterprise E5 plan, you get all the features of Enterprise E3 in addition to rich compliance and advanced security features. Enterprise E5 is the most powerful business suite as it offers a host of features including Microsoft Teams, which is used as a single platform for calling, conferencing, video, and sharing.
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At Cloud Essentials, we spend a lot of time analysing licence package and add-on possibilities for enterprise clients in a variety of different verticals. Our most common recommendation – particularly for legal and financial services with more complex threat protection, IAM, compliance and analytics requirements – is the Microsoft 365 E5 licence. Shazam for mac torrent.
Of course, Microsoft 365 E5 has a rather startling price tag in comparison to the lower-level enterprise licence options. We’ve had more than few raised eyebrows from customers at costing time.
Thankfully, when you take a closer look at the functionality bundled into the licence fee (and the number of expensive 3rd-party solutions it effectively replaces), the value proposition becomes a lot more obvious.
Microsoft 365 and Office 365: what’s the difference?
First off, let’s clarify: Microsoft 365 and Office 365 are not the same thing. Microsoft 365 is a package deal that bundles Office 365 with Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS). There are three Microsoft 365 licence plans:
- Microsoft 365 E3, which includes O365 E3, Windows 10 and EMS
- Microsoft 365 E5, which includes O365 E5, Windows 10, EMS and the latest Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), security and collaboration tools
- Microsoft 365 F1, designed for frontline workers
Setup printer for mac. Our preference for Microsoft 365 E5 is based largely on its ATP, security and analytics capabilities, but it delivers incredible value – and savings – on a number of fronts.
Let’s take a look.
Microsoft 365 E5 features that give the most bang for your buck
Microsoft Teams (previously Skype for Business) full package
Potential savings: $$$
On an E3 licence, Teams is a valuable collaboration tool. On an E5 licence, it becomes a comprehensive phone system that can effectively replace your enterprise telephony altogether (region dependent). It includes:
Microsoft 365 E5 Suite Features
- Instant messaging
- In- and outbound call functionality
- Call routing, auto-attendants and call queues
- Voicemail
- Audio and video conferencing
- Call recording with transcription * NB Microsoft calling plans are currently only available in certain regions – check yours here)
Power BI Pro
Potential savings: $$$
Visual analytics and data modelling tools are notoriously expensive, as are the consultants that enterprises generally have to hire to implement them. On a Microsoft 365 E5 licence, however, business get free access to Power BI Pro: Microsoft’s self-service BI platform that delivers just as much functionality as top 3rd-party solutions with less complexity and lower costs. Read more on that here.
Advanced eDiscovery
Potential savings: $$$$$
eDiscovery is another area in which Microsoft 365 E5 punches well above its weight. In fact, if it delivered nothing more than this functionality, its licence fees would still be money well spent for a lot of customers.
By adding powerful analytics capabilities (as well as basic review tools) to the in-place search, in-place hold, and export functionality available in lower level licence plans, Microsoft 365 E5 enables businesses to perform large parts of the eDiscovery process in-house. This has the potential to save hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees and reduce eDiscovery timelines by a significant amount.
Identity & Access Management
Potential savings: $$
Leveraging Azure Active Directory (P2) functionality, Microsoft 365 E5 adds Identity Protection and Privileged Identity Management (PIM) to the foundational IAM of Office 365’s E5 license plan. These value-adding features provide next-level control over the security of user identities and permitted access and/or roles – the number one entry point for most targeted threats and malware attacks.
Thanks to this functionality, enterprises on Microsoft 365 E5 can (amongst other things):
- Detect vulnerabilities in user identities
- Detect and proactively prevent compromised identities from being abused
- Require approval for specific admin role changes or permissions
- Track granted admin rights and changes within admin groups
- Enable on-demand, just-in-time admin access for specific workflows
It would be a real challenge to find a 3rd-party solution that could provide anywhere near this level of environment-wide, integrated protection. There’s certainly no reason to keep paying for one if you’re on Microsoft 365 E5.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
Potential savings: $$
Between Windows Defender ATP (network attack/data breach prevention), Office 365 ATP (email filtering) and Office 365 Threat Intelligence (security insights and reporting), threat protection on an Microsoft 365 E5 licence is unrivalled in its ability to stop known and unknown malware, viruses and malicious links dead in their tracks. These tools (exclusively available on an E5 license or as an add-on subscription) are effective in real time, across mailboxes as well as shared documents, and – most importantly – leverage threat intelligence gathered from across Microsoft’s entire, global ecosystem.
That’s impossible to match as a 3rd-party solution provider with a dramatically smaller footprint. Read more on that in our blog on Microsoft’s approach to ATP, here.
Advanced Data Governance (with auto-classification & labelling)
Potential savings: priceless (no 3rd-party equivalents)
Microsoft 365 E5 Developer
All Microsoft Enterprise licence plans from E3 upwards allow for the implementation of manual data retention and deletion policies and classifications.
Microsoft 365 E5 goes one step further to automate that process using Azure Information Protection (P2) functionality. This scans content on save to apply the appropriate governance policies and/or labels to documents, ensuring compliance with zero user input required.
For businesses with very specific compliance requirements, we’d also suggest considering the value of Customer Key, Hold Your Own Key and Customer Lockbox, all of which are available on an Microsoft 365 E5 licence and provide unparalleled control over things like encryption keys, just-in-time authorisations and external access.
Cloud App Security
Microsoft 365 E5 Security Pricing
Potential savings: priceless (no 3rd-party equivalents)
Microsoft’s Data Loss Prevention (DLP) functionality is pretty impressive across all its licence plans. Where Microsoft 365 E5 stands out in the crowd is in Cloud App Security. This service extends enterprise DLP, Information Protection Policies and labelling to documents stored or shared in 3rd-party apps like Dropbox, shoring up potential breaches and blocking Shadow IT SaaS apps – something no 3rd-party solution can do.
Adding up the value
For many of our customers, getting rid of all the 3rd-party services and solutions that they needed in the past – along with their deployment, integration and management costs – makes up for the majority (if not entirety) of their M365 E5 licence fees, off the bat.
Add any kind of eDiscovery project to that tally, and M365 E5 literally pays for itself. It’s really a no-brainer for any enterprise with sophisticated compliance, data governance and analytics requirements.
But there’s more to the value of M365 E5 than just cost.
One of the biggest advantages of this license plan is that, by removing the need for 3rd party add-ons, it enables enterprises to manage all their tools and services on a single, integrated platform. For example, Office 365 labelling policies can be used to drive Data Leak Prevention, Mobile Device Management and Information Protection actions across the entire platform, all managed, monitored and reported on in one place.
Microsoft 365 E5 Security
That kind of seamless integration is both rare and incredibly valuable, and no licence plan does it quite as effortlessly as M365 E5.
Need more information?
Choosing a best-fit Microsoft licence plan for your enterprise can be a daunting prospect. As a Gold Certified Cloud Productivity and Cloud Platform Microsoft Partner, Cloud Essentials is ideally positioned to help you assess your options. Get in touch.
In January 2019, Microsoft announced two new security offerings that will sit alongside Microsoft 365 - and we think they are going to be a game changer for companies.
The two new SKUs coming on 1st February 2019 are:
- Identity & Threat Protection – advanced security and threat solutions with a whole range of products (see below)
- Information Protection & Compliance – aimed at governance and compliance (which includes Office 365 Advanced Compliance and Information Protection P2)
Update Jan 2020: The Identity & Threat Protection licence is now known as Microsoft 365 E5 Security and the Information Protection & Compliance licence is now known as Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance. We have left the original names below.
Identity & Threat Protection UK Costs
- Commercial = £9.00 per user per month
- Charity = £3.60 per user per month
Information Protection & Compliance UK Costs
- Commercial = £7.50 per user per month
- Charity = £3.00 per user per month
The launch of these – particularly Identity & Threat Protection - is an exciting announcement from Microsoft and one that we have been long hoping for. The security story within Microsoft 365 is extremely compelling; offering companies of any size some of - if not the - best security tools on the market. However, to get the full advantage of the security offerings organisations needed to either:
- Purchase Microsoft 365 E5 – the highest-spec (and most expensive) licence with a large portion of the cost going towards voice/telephony and Power BI Pro, which most companies simply didn’t need
- Create a licensing mix and match, combining E3 and E5 offerings to get most of the security tools but missing out on some key tools and the discount of the Microsoft 365 bundle
Microsoft 365 E5 Security Features
Luckily, the new licensing change has stopped the need for this and gives the right combination of products to give real value and elevate your security to a whole new level.
Identity & Threat Protection
This offering is the one we’re most excited by as it combines all the advanced security and threat solutions into one package with a very big discount. This package contains Microsoft’s best security tools and costs £9.00 per user per month. If you were to buy the products in this SKU individually from Microsoft it would cost over £30 per user per month.
However, it’s not the discount that makes this offering special but the sheer quality and potential. These tools don’t just boost your IT security up a level – they take your security to a completely new level. Microsoft invest millions into their product development and have large-scale teams working on the solutions to continually test and improve them, which few companies can compete with. As security evolves, your security tools also need to – and Microsoft’s products are built on (and using machine learning from) the intelligence and experience of its telemetry. This consists of 400 billion emails being scanned monthly and 450 billion authentications. No other company can match this telemetry and intelligence.
Microsoft Defender ATP is a great example of this; from the first download of the BadRabbit virus it took only 14 minutes to completely block the ransomware to any other user that received an email. Combined with O365 Threat Intelligence (now simply part of Office 365 ATP) and any trace of this threat was removed from anywhere within the tenancy – you can read about it in detail here.
What’s included?
The new Identity and Threat Protection licence includes:
- Office 365 ATP
- Microsoft Cloud App Security
- Azure ATP
- Azure Active Directory Plan 2
- Microsoft Defender ATP
What do these products do?
Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection: Advanced email protection delivering additional malware and URL link protection (‘Safelinks’) and email detonation chambers. This also includes Office 365 Threat Intelligence - a single pane of glass for actionable insights into your threats, which pulls data from across all these services. Features includes: interactive threat explorer, red team/blue team simulations to find your security holes and one-click actions based on threat alerts.
Cloud App Security: Reports and analyses web browsing activity and gives visibility into your cloud apps and services.
Azure Advanced Threat Protection: Threat detection software which uses machine learning to understand typical behaviour and then detects and acts upon any network anomalies.
See Full List On Microsoft.com
Azure Active Directory Plan 2: Cloud-based directory and identity management service to unify user accounts for improved security and management. Features include single-sign on (SSO), self-service password reset and password-less abilities.
Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection: An advanced post-breach solution, which detects advanced attacks, automatically investigates and gives simple reaction options (all within minutes). This is an Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) solution.
The combination of these products and services provides a holistic and integrated approach to your security. All the pieces integrate and can feed data to one another to build up a simple picture of your security, which balances tight security with great user experience. Having this simplified management is invaluable, as complexity is the enemy of security – having multiple, separate pieces that cannot integrate or are difficult to damage leaves you exposed to more risk of threats, vulnerabilities and likelihood of mistakes.
Conclusion
We believe that this new offering is the missing piece and we’ve been waiting for it for a while, so we’re excited by the launch on 1st February. IT security is a top business priority – and will only continue to grow as our dependence on data and technology grows. Companies are all at varying stages of their cybersecurity maturity journey but one of the difficulties is how fast threats and tactics evolve (such as new ransomware, or identity theft methods).
While it’s important to begin with 'low-hanging fruit' such as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), security threats are continually evolving so you cannot be complacent. This new offering gives a wealth of tools that can take your security to a very advanced level.
If you would like more information, a demo of any of these tools or want to discuss your Microsoft licensing then get in touch with us.