Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled several upcoming Office 365 improvements, including mobile device management (MDM) and data loss protection (DLP) controls.

The announcements were made during the Day 1 keynote of the Microsoft TechEd Europe conference, taking place this week in Barcelona. Julia White, general manager of Microsoft Office, took the stage to demonstrate the ability to connect the cloud-based Azure Active Directory (AD) service with an on-premises Active Directory in "six clicks" during a setup process. With Azure AD in place, IT pros can have their security and auditing functions in one place, she said.

White also described the ability to edit policies for MDM. The policies get embedded into managed apps, such as Office for iPad apps, she said, and the capability will be "natively built into Windows 10." For instance, IT pros can set copy and paste restrictions on managed apps to protect company data.

White also talked about the coming DLP capabilities. With DLP, IT pros have access to Office 365 console reports, which show the rules that can be set up. They also show if users are trying to override the rules. If they are, IT pros can modify the policies to add additional restrictions, if wanted. For instance, restrictions can be set regarding the disclosure of credit card information. Alerts can be set up, as well. End users will get policy tips, so they will become aware of the policy restrictions set by IT.

These Office 365 capabilities are being rolling out at various times, but the target date seems to be the first quarter of next year.

Data Loss Prevention

Microsoft already has some DLP capabilities in its OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online services, including an e-discovery capability. However, the capability to add policy restrictions that can block and restrict access to content will be rolled out in these apps "in the coming months," according to a Microsoft blog post on DLP.

The first app to get the new DLP controls will be Excel, followed by Word and PowerPoint. DLP will work "natively" in Office applications, Microsoft is promising, and the protection scheme will work at the file level, as well as for e-mail, document libraries or OneDrive for Business folders.

File Classifications

Microsoft also plans to extend its file classification infrastructure capability of the Windows File Server to Exchange Online, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online, starting in the first quarter of 2015. Office documents can be classified using this scheme and policies can be set to avoid information disclosure.

OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online also have "advanced encryption at rest," which is a capability that Microsoft calls "per-file encryption." Per-file encryption creates a key for every file stored. It also creates a new key for any variants of those files.