Part 4: Protect and Manage your Data in the Microsoft Ecosystem

In the digital economy, data is your most important asset. You need to share data with your employees so they can work, but it’s imperative that you protect your data for compliance and company security.

The reality is that many small businesses have all of their data sitting on an unsecured network drive in their office, or in the worst cases, they may be shared over personal and unsecured OneDrive and DropBox accounts. The longer a company waits to start properly managing their data, the more difficult the transition to proper data management can be. If your business is using the Microsoft ecosystem, the time to properly architect your data management is right now. You have the tools to be enterprise-ready, you just need to get started!

Where does a small business start?

Remember John Doe at Widget Pro, Inc., who accidentally discovered he had access to all of the company’s project files and even QuickBooks?

What would it cost your company if the same rang true?

What needs to happen for him to have access to what he needs and only what he needs (referred to in IT as the principle of “least privilege access”) on Minute One of Day One of his employment?

One place to start is with Microsoft SharePoint, a file sharing platform that makes sharing across even a distributed, remote workforce easy and secure. By organizing your company logically, you can group different types of functions into SharePoint sites then limit site access to certain identities. You can also easily manage, edit and view access to folders on your site.  This used to require an IT department to create security groups and custom permissions on your file server. Now any project manager can design a secure and easy to use file sharing system on their SharePoint site with the right access for team members and even request secure sharing with clients, if required.

A world of possibilities awaits!

Once in the Microsoft ecosystem, companies can take advantage of offerings such as Dataverse as a way to collect and store data in tables, and your data analysts can tap into this data with Power BI. If you use Microsoft Dynamics, the Microsoft CRM, your data analysts can pour over the data you collect in Dataverse and easily create Power BI dashboard.

Leverage Microsoft's Power Platform in a meaningful way

Even if you use external ERP or CRM systems, you can use Power Automate and other connectors to import your data to the Dataverse to further analyze your data. You also have access to Microsoft Fabric for more powerful and long-term data analytics.

For businesses who want to make custom databases, you can create SQL databases with Azure SQL or CosmoDB, and assign access with Microsoft Entra.

If your business isn’t implementing enterprise ready data management now, you might be at risk of losing out on contracts from larger businesses and government contracts where compliance with data security is paramount. You are also at greater risk of data theft and the possibility of data loss simply by misplacing files. It is imperative that a growing business starts with implementing good data management as soon as possible, and Microsoft has the tools to make it easy.

If you are not comfortable configuring these tools on your own, there are IT professionals ready to help. F1 Cloud Solutions has decades of experience in the Microsoft ecosystem and can implement enterprise-ready data management for your business within months.