UK Government encourages public sector organisations to use Office 365

By Elly Yates-Roberts on 07 January 2019

The UK government is encouraging organisations in the public sector to move their email to the public cloud following new guidance on Office 365. The move is said to make it easier for workers such as nurses and police officers to more easily communicate and collaborate with colleagues, without relying on the government’s Public Services Network.

Moving email, documents and spreadsheets to the cloud would also be more secure and save the government money by moving away from internal intranet services that are currently used in many parts of the public sector.

Microsoft released a guide explaining how Office 365 meets the National Cyber Security Centre’s (NCSC) ‘14 Cloud Security Principles’ to help with the transition.

“This documentation provides a thoughtful and detailed outline of how to secure your Office 365 tenant in line with the government’s security principles and offers practical guidance to ensure users stay safe right now, and helps support organisations’ compliance efforts with GDPR,” said Michael Wignall, chief technology officer at Microsoft UK.

Microsoft has released two documents: one detailing how Office 365 maps to the cloud security principles; the other providing guidance on how Office 365 features can be used to ensure that a common bar is achieved by their Office 365 tenant.

“This guidance has been developed through the shared expertise and successful collaboration between the NCSC, Microsoft and the Government Digital Service,” said a spokesperson from the NCSC. “The advice aims to help private and public sector colleagues check and improve the security stance of their Office 365 deployments.”