Office 365 is one of the better products to have come out of Redmond over the last couple of years. For very little money you have access to some of the best enterprise class products and services on the market which can really transform a business. It is no wonder thousands of businesses have signed up and continue to do so. There is however one pitfall that I have come across in the last 12 months which quite a few businesses continue to fall into – joining someone elses Office 365 subscription.
Let me explain what I am on about. Lets say we have a company called A who does a lot of work with a company called B who has an active Office 365 Small Business subscription. Company A is very impressed with Office 365 and is considering signing up as they feel it would improve their business. Company B suggests that since both companies work closely together it would be no hassle to add Company A to their active subscription. This is the pitfall. Once company A is added to company B’s subscription company B would have access to all of company A’s emails and any documents stored in OneDrive for Business. This is even worse if company A stores any data that is not relevant to company B in OneDrive for Business (I have seen this) as effectively data protection goes out the window.
I have seen IT companies actively encouraging companies to sign upto the same subscription which to me is ludicrous. Yes it makes the IT management simpler but exposes client data to a third party which goes against the data protection act.
So if you intend to subscribe to Office 365 do yourself and your clients a favour and get your own subscription and don’t join someone else’s.
About the Author
Hi I’m Chris Wakefield the owner of ComTech IT Support. I provide Windows, Mac and Linux based IT Support to small businesses in Stirling, Alloa and Falkirk.
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