Geofencing is an exciting technology that is already in use in our daily lives. From being used to track our pet’s whereabouts, to keeping airports safe, to smart homes controlling our thermostats and opening our garage doors when we get close to home. It can also be a very helpful tool in keeping your company’s data safe and secure.
Geofencing is a type of firewall that can define a geographic area by looking at the physical location of an IP address of a network request and incoming traffic. Geofencing blocks people from logging in from outside an area your company defines. This helps protect your data against bad actors, threats from other countries and people who shouldn’t be logging in. As an example, if you are in Michigan and all your employees live in Michigan, you should never have an need for someone to log in from Europe. Thanks to Geofencing you can block that. This also helps with compliance, if your company has a rule that employees are not allowed to work while on vacation, they won’t be able to log in from their destination and can truly get away from the office for family time.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to turn on geofencing in your Microsoft Office 365:
Step 1: Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center
To get started, sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center with your administrator credentials.
Step 2: Navigate to the Conditional Access policies
Once you’re in the Microsoft 365 admin center, click on the “Admin centers” tab on the left-hand side of the page, and then click on “Security & Compliance”.
In the Security & Compliance center, click on “Policies” in the left-hand menu, and then click on “Conditional Access” to view your organization’s conditional access policies.
Step 3: Create a new Conditional Access policy
Click on “New policy” to create a new conditional access policy. Give your policy a name and a description so that it’s easy to identify.
Step 4: Define the conditions for your policy
Under “Assignments”, define the users or groups that this policy will apply to. Then, under “Cloud apps or actions”, select the Office 365 services that you want to apply geofencing to.Next, click on “Conditions” to define the conditions for your policy. Under “Locations”, select “Include” and then click on “Selected locations”. In the pop-up window, click on “Add location” to add a new location.
Step 5: Add a geolocation
In the “Add location” window, you can define the geographic area that you want to include or exclude. You can use a variety of methods to define your location, including entering an address, drawing on a map, or importing a file.
Once you’ve defined your location, click on “Done” to add it to your policy. You can add multiple locations if needed.
Step 6: Save and enable your policy
Once you’ve defined all the conditions for your policy, click on “Controls” to define the access controls that will be enforced for users accessing Office 365 from the specified locations.
For example, you can require multi-factor authentication, block access entirely, or only allow access from specific devices or apps.
When you’re ready, click on “Enable policy” to activate your new geofencing policy.
Please reach out to Ravitron to find out more about geofencing and other exciting features that come with Microsoft 365. If your company is interested in using this software, Ravitron can install, set up and train your staff on all its features.
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