Microsoft 365 E5 offers a suite of productivity apps. Microsoft 365 E5 is an enterprise-level version of the Microsoft 365 Family. In addition to productivity apps, E5 offers Microsoft security technology and advanced capabilities for compliance and analytics. The key features of Microsoft 365 E5 are as follows:
Security—Microsoft 365 E5 bestowal integrated and automated security capabilities for identity and threat protection. This can help prevent attacks from causing too much damage.
Compliance—Microsoft 365 E5 centralizes information security and compliance capabilities to help control and secure data. This can help mitigate risks and comply with regulatory and organizational compliance requirements.
Analytics—Microsoft 365 E5 provides Power BI capabilities that can help analyze your data and gain insights. You can use Power BI to realize new business value.
Microsoft 365 E5: Top 10 Security Features
The E5 plan offers all the features included in the E3 plan with expanded security features. Here is a brief overview of the security features unique to Microsoft 365 E5:
- Azure Active Directory Premium
Azure Active Directory or Azure AD is a cloud-based identity and access management IAM feature built into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. It provides single sign-on (SSO), allowing employees to use one set of credentials to access Microsoft 365 resources. It also provides multi-factor authentication to protect user accounts.
Azure AD provides a premium P2 plan that includes an identity protection feature. Identity protection can detect potential identity vulnerabilities and automatically respond to suspicious actions. It lets you configure these automated responses to ensure that responses are in line with your security standards. You can also manually investigate and mitigate suspicious events.
- Microsoft Defender for Office 365
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 provides the following security capabilities:
Email filtering—This solution provides cloud-based email filtering that protects against threats to email and collaboration tools, such as phishing schemes, malware attacks, and business email compromises.
Detection—Defender for Office 365 provides threat discovery, investigation, and remediation capabilities.
Learn more about Microsoft Defender for Office 365 in our detailed guide.
- Information Security and Governance
Microsoft employs the following two services to classify and secure data across all locations:
Microsoft Information Protection (MIP)—This solution helps discover, classify, and secure sensitive data and business-critical content throughout the lifecycle and across all locations within the organization.
Microsoft Information Governance (MIG)—This disentanglement manages the lifecycle of content using several solutions to classify, import, and store business-critical data.
- Insider Risk Management
Microsoft 365 E5 provides insider risk management to help you mitigate insider risks. It provides detection, investigation, and response to malicious and unintentional activities. The solution lets you use policies to define specific risks to identify those relevant to your organization. For example, you can set it up to take action on cases as well as escalate cases to Microsoft Advanced eDiscovery when needed.
- Power BI Pro
Power BI includes several services, connectors, and apps that work together to transform multiple data sources into interactive and visually immersive insights. You can easily connect data sources to Power BI and visualize insights to discover and share. It lets you use a variety of data sources, including Excel spreadsheets, cloud-based data pools, on-premises stores, and hybrid data warehouses.
- Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Microsoft E5 lets you use the capabilities of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to detect, prevent, investigate, and respond to advanced threats.
Learn more about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint in our detailed guide.
- Microsoft Defender for Identity
Microsoft 365 E5 uses Microsoft Defender for Identity to provide cloud-based identity protection capabilities. This disentanglement uses on-premises AD signals to identify and investigate compromised identities, malicious insider actions, and advanced threats.
Learn more about Microsoft Defender for Identity in our detailed guide.
- Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps
Microsoft 365 E5 uses Microsoft Defender for Cloud Applications to bestow cloud access security broker (CASB) capabilities. It supports multiple deployment modes such as log collection, reverse proxy, and API connectors. Once connected, this CASB provides expanded visibility and control over the data journey. It also provides sophisticated analytics to identify threats across all cloud services, including Microsoft and third-party clouds.
- Advanced e-Discovery and Advanced Audit
Advanced e-Discovery helps collect, preserve, review, analyze, and export content needed for internal and external investigations. Microsoft 365 builds on existing analytics and Microsoft eDiscovery capabilities to help legal teams manage legal hold notification workflows and communicate with custodians involved in a matter.
Microsoft 365 offers an audit functionality that provides visibility into various audited activities across Microsoft 365 services. It helps conduct compliance and forensic investigations by facilitating the following:
Increased audit log retention kept for longer periods for investigation purposes.
Access to critical events to help determine the scope of compromise.
Instant access to the Office 365 Management Activity API.
- Built-in third-party connectors
Microsoft 365 provides built-in third-party data connectors to let you import and store data from a variety of sources, such as social media platforms like Twitter. These connectors support the Insider Risk Management solution, allowing you to store data in the Microsoft 365 Compliance Center.
What are Microsoft Office 365 E1 and E3?
To understand the capabilities offered by an Office 365 E5 license, it may be useful to understand the two lower tiers – E1 and E3. E5 includes all the features of the lower-tier Office 365 license, plus additional capabilities.
Microsoft 365 E1
This is the “lightest” version of the Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise plan. It includes the following features:
Microsoft Exchange email and calendar management
Yammer for enterprise social messaging
SharePoint for intranet capabilities and team sites
OneDrive for Business, including 1 TB of storage
Microsoft Delve for content search
StaffHub for task management
Microsoft Stream for enterprise video sharing
Microsoft Teams for chat and video conferencing
Online versions of all Microsoft Office applications— Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.
Microsoft 365 E3
The Office E3 plan has the same features as E1, plus the following additional features:
Multi-device usage—Each user can install the applications on up to 5 desktops, 5 tablets, and 5 smartphones.
Microsoft Office Suite—Users are eligible for the latest versions of all Microsoft Office applications, which they can download and install on Windows, Mac, tablets, and smartphones.
Cloud storage—The ability to expand OneDrive storage by 5 TB or up to 25 TB.
Advanced Data Management – Including archiving, rights management, document encryption, and advanced access controls for documents and email.