7 Keys for Small Business Cloud Technology Success

Seven (7) keys to small business cloud technology solutions provide the foundation to increase security, enhance productivity and elevate the customer experience.  One of the biggest business drivers for cloud solutions, a business pays for what they need.  Who watches your cloud environment (also known as a tenant)?

The Microsoft 365 Business Premium solution as well as other cloud solutions keep changing and developing new features and functionality.  This causes the risk of your business to change or evolve over time.  Below we deep dive into 7 keys to keep small business cloud solutions under control.

Small Business Cloud Technology Success

The purpose of these 7 keys for small business cloud success is to drive more efficiency and greater profitability securely.  If these 7 keys are not monitored, profits will suffer.  While we discuss these keys, we make reference to Microsoft 365 due to the security and productivity features.  No matter what the cloud solutions is each key could apply to some degree.

Microsoft takes the security of their platform serious, that doesn’t protect you from your own people, who can perform high-risk actions.  Small businesses are responsible to manage the configuration and resources within the cloud tenant.

Resources Managed

Are you tracking your cloud application resources for your business?  Potentially a small business will maintain control with less than 10 employees.  However, as a company starts to grow, processes and controls to manage cloud resources become critical to the financial bottom line.  An organization needs to handle the onboarding and offboarding of employees well.  This provides increased security.

Also, storage and compute resources in an Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS) offering, maintain a plan for your compute and data resources.  Servers if not in use can be shut down and save money.  Old data might need to be purged.

Time Managed

Speaking of data.  Is your cloud environment bloated with data?  Over time business change and evolve.  Retention and organization of data provides enhanced performance and productivity.  Your employees will know what data is important for their role and where to find the data.

This does take communication to your employees and just doesn’t happen on autopilot.

Tenant Control

What controls exist to see your tenant environment?  With Microsoft 365, businesses share information externally and internally for business purposes utilizing apps like SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook and Teams to name a few.  Do you know who accesses the data shared?  Without consistent reporting and monitoring this can go unchecked.

You cannot manage what you cannot see or control.  Without regular reporting and analysis of your Microsoft Cloud environments, there is no way for you to understand your risks, contain costs or improve productivity.

Protect Credentials

What controls exist to protect your accounts in your cloud technology solutions?  In todays world, every small business needs to configure a multifactor authentication solution at a minimum.  However, more can be done for example in a Microsoft 365 solution where conditional access is implemented.

Protect account credentials and monitor changes within the Microsoft 365 environment stops over 90% of attacks.

Monitor Threats

What controls exist to monitor potential threats?  Microsoft 365 provides insight to where logins occur from.  Make sure your small business understand who and where employees log into your cloud environments.

Also, monitor documents that are shared or downloaded externally for other purposes.  Could this be a risk to your small business?  Sometimes things happen by accident, if no one monitors the tenant no one knows about a potential issue.

Monitor Permissions

Who reviews or controls permissions?  Most of the time permissions are assign upon onboarding a new employee.  As employees change roles privileges and permissions change.  From a security perspective, it is important to limit account access in accordance of “least privilege”.  Meaning only the permissions and privileges provided to the employee for what they need.

Document Processes

The final key is documented processes.  How does anyone know what to do if it isn’t document.  Documentation also provides a ground work and framework for new hires to follow and know what is important in the company.

Next Steps

Hope you find these 7 keys to small business cloud technology helpful.  Take the time to list out each one and understand your gaps.  Reach out to Cloudz Biz if you need more guidance.

Learn more about Cloudz Biz Microsoft 365 Assessment by clicking the link below:

Microsoft 365 Assessment