From 1 July 2026, Microsoft is raising commercial Microsoft 365 prices across most of its business plans. For organisations in Devon, this is the right moment to review how the email running through those subscriptions is being looked after. Strong email security in Devon involves more than a Microsoft licence on its own, and the next few months are a useful window to take stock.
Why a Microsoft 365 price review matters for email security in Devon
Microsoft confirmed the pricing update in December 2025, with new commercial pricing coming into effect on 1 July 2026. Existing subscriptions stay on current rates until the next renewal, but most Business and Enterprise plans will cost more once that renewal happens.
Most teams will use this moment to look at licence numbers, plan tiers and unused seats. But now that you know what email is costing you, are you confident it is being properly looked after?
A licence buys you a working inbox. It doesn’t, on its own, give you everything needed to keep that inbox safe. Filtering, encryption, archiving and monitoring all sit alongside the core subscription, and each one is worth a fresh look when you’re already opening the invoice.
Email is still where most attacks start
Phishing remains the most common type of cyber attack against UK organisations. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/2026 found that phishing affected 38% of businesses over the previous year, making it the single most disruptive attack type reported.
The risks aren’t only about classic “click this link” emails. Common patterns include spam carrying malicious attachments, impersonation of suppliers and directors, credential theft through fake Microsoft 365 sign-in pages, and compromised accounts being used to email colleagues from the inside.
Any of these can lead to fraud, data loss or downtime. They tend to get through when a business is relying only on the default Microsoft 365 email security tools that come with a standard subscription. Default settings are designed to be a reasonable baseline for the broadest possible customer base, not a configuration tuned to your particular threat profile. Layered protection does more of the work that out-of-the-box settings cannot.
How email filtering reduces everyday threats
A good email filtering service sits in front of your inbox and inspects everything coming in. Suspicious messages such as known phishing patterns, malicious attachments, and links to malicious sites are quarantined before they reach users.
This matters for two reasons. The obvious one is that fewer threats land in front of staff, which means fewer chances for someone to click something they shouldn’t. The less obvious one is time. Less spam to wade through, fewer queries forwarded to IT, and fewer borderline messages that staff feel uncertain about.
Filtering also reduces what’s sometimes called alert fatigue. When inboxes are full of obvious junk, the genuinely dangerous emails are harder to spot. A properly tuned filter strips out most of the clutter, so the messages that do reach users are the ones worth their attention. BCNS provides email filtering and quarantine as part of its managed email services, available for small teams and larger organisations alike.
Email encryption and archiving for sensitive information
Email encryption protects messages in transit, so confidential information such as financial details, client records, and contracts can only be read by the intended recipient. For businesses handling personal data, this is a practical step towards meeting obligations under UK GDPR, which the Information Commissioner’s Office treats as a baseline security measure.
Archiving sits alongside encryption. Instead of relying on inboxes for record-keeping, an archive captures messages in a separate, searchable store. That helps in two ways. If you ever need to produce email records for an audit, an insurance claim, or a subject access request, you can find them quickly. And if an account is compromised or accidentally cleared out, the archive is still there.
Most businesses already trust email with information they wouldn’t put in the post. Encryption and archiving make that trust easier to defend if a question comes up later, whether from a customer asking how their data is being protected or an auditor checking your records.
Ongoing monitoring and business email support
Setting up filtering and encryption is the start. Threats change, attackers test new tricks, and configurations drift over time. Continuous monitoring is what keeps an email environment in step with the threats it’s meant to stop.
In practice, monitoring means watching login patterns for unusual activity, tracking attempted phishing campaigns aimed at your domain, and acting quickly when something looks wrong. A flagged sign-in from an unfamiliar country, a sudden spike in outbound emails, an account that’s just changed its forwarding rules – these are the kinds of signals that ongoing business email support is set up to catch.
The 2026 price changes also bundle new security features into some Microsoft 365 plans, which is worth checking against what you already have. A managed provider can take stock of the built-in tools, the gaps, and the extras worth paying for separately. For businesses reviewing email security in Devon, that’s the sort of work that pays off quietly until the day it stops something.
Strengthen your business email security
If your business depends on Microsoft 365, it’s worth making sure your email protection is keeping pace with the threats it now faces. BCNS provides managed email services and ongoing support for organisations across Devon.
Book a free consultation to talk through your setup, or download our free email security guide for a broader overview of what good protection looks like.
