Roadshow Podcast- Episode 2

J Peter Roadshow Podcast - Episode 2

Q: J. Peter, where are you?

A: Greetings!  J .Peter here and this week I’m in Nashville Tennessee.  When I think of Nashville I think of country music and the Grand Ole Opry. The Grand Ole Opry was founded nearly 100 years ago in 1925 and is a weekly country music stage concert that has hosted all the greats over the years. Did you know it’s the longest-running radio broadcast in US history? It’s also a hotspot for Pokémon Go players. I caught several new ones right in front of the place.  But I digress.

Nashville also makes me think of the movie “The Thing Called Love”.  A 1993 film about four young song writers trying to get their music noticed.  Starred River Phoenix, Samantha Mathis, a young Sandra Bullock and a young Dermot Mulroney.

Q: Why are you there?

A: I’m here in Nashville TN to Keynote a lunch event sponsored by Mimecast.  It’s held at the Palm Restaurant in downtown Nashville. I’ve done events at Palm’s before in Orlando, Chicago, Colorado, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Philly and I’m a huge fan of this location as a venue. Should have about 25 in the audience and I’m looking forward to having a lively discussion about Office 365.

Q: What are you there for?

A: I’m going to discuss with the audience a comparison between the big switch that occurred by in the day with a move to electricity being generated as a utility as opposed to it being generated on-premises and our day, where we are moving from on-prem to the cloud.  This comparison was brought to my attention by Nicholas Carr in his book “The Big Switch” and I like to tell the story for the audience. By the end of the discussion we hone in on Office 365 rhetoric vs. reality and I point out several areas where there is a need for enhancements in areas like Security, Compliance and Archiving, and increased availability or continuity. At the end of the event, I answered questions from the audience and then give everyone a copy of the book “Conversational Office 365 Risk Mitigation” sponsored by Mimecast.  

One question that came up was “how is Microsoft’s archive solution different from a third-party?”  I explained that Microsoft doesn’t have a traditional archive solution which goes beyond eDiscovery and offers user interactivity (aka a read-only archive), nor does it allow for data agility or portability as a separate data bank solution. Rather, it’s simply legal hold on all mailboxes, which does provide for eDiscovery but does not reflect the modern advancements we’ve come to expect from an enterprise-grade archive solution.  It was a good question I thought. 

Q: Last question, right now Ransomware is a big topic in the news, can you tell me what you’ve heard recently on it?

A: Another question involved how Office 365 handles advanced threats like ransomware. Well… if you have an E5 plan or pay extra for their advanced threat protection, it includes a sandboxing solution that can help against attachments that might include a ransomware attack. Recently a macro-enabled Word document ransomware attack attracted a lot of attention in the news because it made it through Office 365 defenses until they eventually caught it and updated their security solution to spot it. Typically that happens from time to time. Something gets through initially until it’s discovered and blocked. It’s one of the reasons I preach defense in depth. If one solution doesn’t have the fix than the other one might. I also like having solutions that offer different features.  For example, Mimecast does sandbox too but first it does document conversion. So a file that comes in with ransomware in a weaponized attachment would have been rendered ineffective due to the document conversion process. That’s something Microsoft simply doesn’t have. So by layering your security approach you have a much better chance of protecting your organization from the modern threats that come our way, whether ransomware, impersonation attacks, spear phishing, whaling and so on.

Hey, I hope you’ve enjoyed following me to Nashville Tennessee 

Where am I going next? The ITLA Conference in Washington DC!!!

Related Content

Road Show Podcast: Episode 1

Infographic: Road Show Podcast 2016

5 Questions To Ask Before Selecting Office 365™

Related Services

Mimecast Services For Office 365

Targeted Threat Protection