On-by-Default Office 365 Features Could Pose Risks

• Office 365 provides online services in addition to the desktop Office suite.
• Online services are usually turned on by default in Office 365, and initial availability can occur with little notice.
• Customers should evaluate the risks of new services and turn them off if necessary.

Office 365 provides online services in addition to the desktop Office 365 ProPlus application suite. When new services and features are added to Office 365 subscriptions, Microsoft usually turns them on by default, often with little notice. While these offerings might include technologies intended to make work more efficient, they can also create management, data security, and compliance issues. Customers should be prepared to evaluate the benefits and risks of each new service and turn a service off, if necessary, until all ramifications of its use are understood. (For a list of these services, see the chart “On-by-Default Office 365 Services.”)

Risks of On-by-Default Services

New Office 365 services often do not appear in Microsoft’s published Microsoft 365 roadmap or elsewhere before they are launched, and there is no advance-notice policy for introducing services and features.