Office 365 meets all kinds of needs for small businesses, but perhaps none is more important than this: you are working in a completely secure cloud, designed to provide multiple layers of protection so that your files, conversations, and collaborative efforts are safe. Office 365 services use 128-bit SSL/TSL encryption, which means that if communication is intercepted by an outside party, the file will be unreadable.
Additionally, Microsoft Trustworthy Computing initiatives are in full force; antivirus signatures are continually updated, and Forefront Online Protection for Exchange protects and filters messages.
You can take a closer look at the security measures Microsoft uses for its Online Services by reading the “Security Features in Microsoft Online Services” paper available at the Microsoft Download center (www.microsoft.com/downloads).
However, you need to secure your account with a strong password. Your password for Office 365 needs to be at least eight characters in length. To increase the strength of the password—which decreases the risk that your password will be deciphered by someone else—use a variety of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.
The Password Strength bar will be shown to you to know how strong the password you’re suggesting will be; you can revise the password as needed to make it as strong as possible.
Reliability is another promise Office 365 keeps well for small businesses. Because all services are in the cloud, you need to have guaranteed access to Web services to work reliably and productively. To help ensure that your work is always accessible to your team, many data centers all over the world host redundant network configurations. So if one data center is unavailable, another one takes its place so that your work can continue uninterrupted.