Learn how a government agency achieved robust governance, compliance, and data protection in Microsoft 365, enhancing security and reducing complexities, with AvePoint.

The AvePoint Solution

To address their challenges, the organization worked with AvePoint, through its managed services provider, Datacom.

First, they decided to implement AvePoint Cloud Governance, a solution that delivers a wide range of IT services while automating and controlling the management of content ownership, policies, and lifecycle according to evolving business needs. The implementation process involved a series of workshops conducted by AvePoint to tailor the solution to the organization’s specific requirements.

The top priority was streamlining Teams provisioning. With the implementation of Cloud Governance, staff could create their own workspaces while adhering to the conditions set by the organization for different types of Teams. For example, more stringent controls were required on external teams than on internal private teams.

The organization also implemented AvePoint Opus to establish records management practices for their Microsoft 365 content. Members of the AvePoint delivery team were sent to the organization’s headquarters to work with its staff for a week to expedite the deployment of AvePoint Opus.

The first order of business was to simplify the organization’s complicated business classification scheme (BCS). The organization followed two schedules - Archives New Zealand's General Disposal Authority 6 and an internal authority - which resulted in over 650 classification terms. During the workshops, the team was able to simplify the BCS by reducing the number of terms by more than 60%. This simplification made classification and disposal easier to manage and more efficient.

Next, policies were set up around each classification, particularly regarding disposal. Prior to AvePoint Opus, the organization had never disposed of content before, but with the solution, the organization established retention periods for each classification and enabled the disposal of content based on these periods. With these policies in place, the organization built a structure for each content type in SharePoint and ran practice runs of content disposals.

The government organization finally achieved a record management best practice the day AvePoint Opus was deployed by disposing of 5,000 records. While they still have 6 million records managed by the solution, they took a critical step towards their defensible disposal of content and is confident that the new process set by AvePoint Opus will help reduce risk while still meeting compliance.

While the delivery team was in town, they performed a security scan using AvePoint Insights, which checks for security vulnerabilities and risks. One of the biggest red flags uncovered by Insights was the existence of 14,000 guest users, indicating that they needed to clean up its Azure AD and revoke access for anyone who was unnecessary. After this issue was flagged, the organization took action and revoked access for nearly 80% of its guest users. This was an important step in improving the security of their system and reducing the risk of unauthorized access.

The government organization used AvePoint Cloud Backup to protect over 130 TB of their data across Microsoft 365. This cloud-to-cloud backup solution offers four automatic backups a day and provides built-in storage, encryption, and efficient restores. It seamlessly protects all Teams chats, files, and pages with customizable retention policies to meet public sector compliance regulations and enhance the organization’s business continuity strategy.