Survey Report – Osterman Research

The Value of Threat Intelligence – Survey Report

Osterman Research — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 23:00:00 +0000

Cyber security is an ongoing battle between sophisticated and well-funded bad actors and those who must defend corporate networks against their attacks. The bad news is that the latter are typically not winning. A recent Osterman Research surveyi found that while most organizations self-report that they are doing “well” or “very well” against ransomware, other types of malware infections, and thwarting account takeovers because of the significant emphasis placed on these threats, they are not doing well against just about every other type of threat. These include protecting data sought by attackers, preventing users from reaching malicious sites after they respond to a phishing message, eliminating business email compromise (BEC) attacks, eliminating phishing attempts before they reach end users, and preventing infections on mobile devices.

This missing component for most organizations is the addition of robust and actionable threat intelligence to their existing security defenses, which can be segmented into four subcategories:

Strategic (non-technical information about an organization’s threat landscape)
Tactical (details of threat actors’ tactics, techniques and procedures)
Operational (actionable information about specific, incoming attacks)
Technical (technical threat indicators, e.g., malware hashes)

The use of good threat intelligence can enable security analysts, threat researchers and others to gain the upper hand in dealing with cyber criminals by giving them the information they need to better understand current and past attacks, and it can give them the tools they need to predict and thwart future attacks. Moreover, good threat intelligence can bolster existing security defenses like SIEMs and firewalls and make them more effective against attacks. Threat intelligence plays a key role in proactive defense to ensure that all security programs are relevant to the fast-evolving threat landscape. This is particularly valuable in security awareness training to ensure users are familiar with known threats.

ABOUT THIS SURVEY REPORT

This survey report presents the results of a primary market research survey conducted with members of the Osterman Research survey panel and another panel and others during mid-2019.

Survey Report – The Value of Threat IntelligenceDownload

The Importance of Doing Email Migrations the Right Way – Survey Report

Osterman Research — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 23:00:00 +0000

Migrating an organization’s email and/or archiving systems to Office 365, Exchange Online, Google G Suite or some other email, collaboration or archiving platform is not an easy thing to accomplish. There are a number of critical decisions to make in advance of migrating to a new platform, and the migration process itself requires careful planning and execution over an extended period in order to avoid data corruption, lost chain-of-custody for sensitive data, and ensuring a minimal impact on employee productivity. There is a sequence of activities that must be scoped, agreed upon, and carried out properly in order for the migration to be successful. Aligned with the activities in the migration process are a range of third-party products and services that can simplify and streamline the migration process, improving the end result, while decreasing the risk of human error during the process.

ABOUT THIS SURVEY REPORT

This survey report presents the results of a primary market research survey conducted with members of the Osterman Research survey panel and others during October 2019.

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Using Third-Party Solutions with Office 365 – Survey Report

Osterman Research — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Office 365 is licensed for use by more than 180 million users at more than 1.4 million commercial, education and government organizations, making it currently the most popular enterprise cloud service in the world. It covers a variety of situations, scenarios, and capability sets. Microsoft has won massive market momentum by bundling office productivity software and cloud-based services in Office 365 and Microsoft 365, much like it did with its original bundling of Word, PowerPoint and Excel back in the 1990s to create Microsoft Office. This paper discusses aspects of the email messaging and collaboration services that are nearly synonymous with Office 365.

While Microsoft offers an industry-leading communications, collaboration and productivity platform, organizations need to understand their real requirements and most would be well-served by reinforcing the service in several key, supplemental areas, most especially security, archiving, eDiscovery, and encryption. Decision makers need to be aware that relying exclusively on the native capabilities in Office 365 can present challenges and business risks for their organization. While the inclusion of similar capabilities in the platform may give some the impression of platform self-sufficiency, organizations should recognize that certain features may not best align with their business needs, now or in the future. In specific areas, it’s important to recognize that a focused third-party vendor with deep industry and solution experience is often able to deliver deeper and better capabilities compared to Microsoft, thereby complementing Office 365 and reducing the business risk of embracing all Office 365 features as sufficient or even ideal.

ABOUT THIS SURVEY REPORT

This survey report presents the results of a primary market research survey conducted with members of the Osterman Research survey panel and others during July 2019.

Survey Report – Using Third-Party Solutions with Office 365Download

Filling the Gaps in Office 365 – Survey Report

Osterman Research — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The title of this white paper notwithstanding, Osterman Research wants to make it clear at the outset that we believe Microsoft Office 365 to be a robust and capable platform, one that will serve most organizations well. If your organization is using Office 365, we recommend you continue to do so. If you’re not using it, we recommend you consider it. Microsoft offers a large, varied and growing number of features and functions in Office 365, and at a wide range of price points that will satisfy a number of different markets.

That said, decision makers evaluating the efficacy of Office 365 to meet their business requirements must be aware of its shortcomings in the areas of data protection, archiving, security, encryption, authentication and eDiscovery (among others) covering workloads like Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, Skype for Business, and Azure Active Directory. An awareness of these shortcomings enables decision makers to plan for the mitigations required to assure the proper business performance of Office 365.

ABOUT THIS WHITE PAPER

This survey report presents the results of a primary market research survey conducted with members of the Osterman Research survey panel and others during October 2017.

Survey Report – Filling the Gaps in Office 365Download

Best Practices for Dealing With Phishing and Ransomware – Survey Report

Osterman Research — Sat, 10 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Phishing and ransomware are serious problems that can steal or disable access to corporate or personal finances, sensitive employee data, patient data, intellectual property, employee files and other valuable content. Both ransomware and phishing attacks and their variants – spearphishing/whaling and CEO Fraud/Business Email Compromise (BEC) – are increasingly common and are having devastating impacts on businesses of all sizes. The financial impact of cybercrime in general – and phishing and ransomware in particular – is hard to assess for a variety of reasons, but the FBI estimates that ransomware alone cost organizations $209 million in just the first three months of 2016i.

Phishing and ransomware are critical problems that every organization must address and through a variety of means: user education, security solutions, vulnerability analysis, threat intelligence, good backup processes, and even common sense. The good news is that there is much that organizations can do to protect themselves, their data, their employees and their customers.

ABOUT THIS INDUSTRY SURVEY REPORT

This survey report presents the results of a primary market research survey conducted with members of the Osterman Research survey panel during August 2016.

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Best Practices for eDiscovery and Regulatory Compliance in Office 365 – Survey Report

Osterman Research — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Published December 2016

Sponsored by Archive360, bluesource, Proofpoint, Smarsh and Sonian

eDiscovery and compliance are essential activities for any organization, regardless of its size, the industry that it serves or the jurisdictions in which it operates. To be sure, “heavily” regulated organizations – such as those in the financial services, healthcare, life sciences, energy and certain other markets – face higher levels of compliance obligation than their less heavily regulated counterparts. However, every organization must factor eDiscovery and compliance into its communications and collaboration strategy.

Microsoft Office 365 provides a successful and popular set of communications and collaboration capabilities, and its use will continue to grow at a rapid pace. Although Microsoft has been offering hosted/cloud-based offerings for more than 15 years, Office 365 is the most successful iteration of the company’s cloud-based communications and collaboration offerings to date. Microsoft has done a good job at building eDiscovery and compliance capabilities into Office 365 and should be commended for doing so. However, there are a number of limitations and deficiencies in Office 365 from an eDiscovery and compliance context that decision-makers should consider as they evaluate Microsoft’s offerings. Even more so in environments that operate both Microsoft and non-Microsoft solutions.

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Results of an End User Survey About Communications Practices – Survey Report

Osterman Research — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 01:00:00 +0000

Osterman Research conducted a market research survey in July 2016 to understand end-user behavior in the context of the corporate and personally owned information systems that users employ to do their work. Our focus was on primary information systems like email and how it is changing over time, the information overload that users may or may not experience in email, the devices that they use, the encryption capabilities available to end-users, file sync and share tools, Skype and related tools, users’ perceptions about IT attitudes toward BYOD, security awareness training, and other key aspects of end-users’ interactions with work-related communication and collaboration systems.

Our goal was to survey both technical and non-technical across a wide range of industries.

ABOUT THIS INDUSTRY SURVEY REPORT

This survey report presents the results of a primary market research survey conducted with members of the Osterman Research survey panel during July 2016.

Survey Report – Communications Practices Among End-UsersDownload

Exchange Online and Office 365 Migration and Deployment – Survey Report

Osterman Research — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 23:00:00 +0000

The use of Exchange Online and Office 365 across the globe is growing rapidly, driven by the intense sales focus of Microsoft and its business partners, along with a clear value proposition for organizations of all sizes. While the uptake of Exchange Online is leading the early growth charge, there are significant opportunities for organizations to leverage the many other components of Office 365 to re-invent productivity.

ABOUT THIS INDUSTRY SURVEY REPORT

This survey report presents the results of a primary market research survey conducted with members of the Osterman Research survey panel during May 2016.

Survey Report – Exchange Online and Office 365 Migration and DeploymentDownload

Hybrid Cloud Deployment – Survey Report

Osterman Research — Mon, 20 Jun 2016 01:00:00 +0000

When we think about “the cloud,” it’s natural to focus on public clouds. But public is not the only type of cloud. Public clouds use proven technology to pool data center resources and help maximize their computing potential. These same principles can be used in your data center, either on your premises or on one that you exclusively rent from someone else, to create a private cloud. This technology also gives you the flexibility to mix and match; allowing you to choose where an application is hosted, and to move it later.

This then is the essence of hybrid cloud: With the benefit of cloud technology, you can move workloads between public and private clouds — or choose a combination of the two.

ABOUT THIS INDUSTRY SURVEY REPORT

This survey report presents the results of a primary market research survey conducted with members of the Osterman Research survey panel during March 2016.

Survey Report – Hybrid Cloud DeploymentDownload

File Sync and Share: Market Trends and Forecast – Survey Report

Osterman Research — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 23:00:00 +0000

Many IT decision makers are focused on the use of consumer-focused file sync and share (FSS) tools that was popularized by Dropbox, but now a growing variety of other, similar tools. While many consider consumer-focused FSS to be a serious problem in the workplace, most of them work as advertised – they provide users with many gigabytes of free cloud storage and allow synchronization of any file across users’ desktop, laptop and mobile platforms automatically.

And that’s the problem: these tools permit any file to be synchronized across any device by any user without IT’s involvement or management. This means that sensitive or confidential employee records, customer financial information, embargoed press releases, and other data can be synchronized to any user’s device without IT’s ability to prevent critical information from being modified, without first being encrypted, without an audit trail established of how the information was sent or received, without any control over who can have access to the data, and without IT’s control over where and by whom that data is stored. This creates legal, regulatory, privacy and other risks for any organization in which these tools are used.

ABOUT THIS INDUSTRY SURVEY REPORT

This survey report presents the results of two primary market research surveys conducted with members of the Osterman Research survey panel during July 2015 and March/April 2016.

Survey Report – File Sync and Share Market Trends and ForecastDownload