Behold the might of dynamic crimefighting duo Captain Met Police and the Microsoft Kid

Office 365 to demonstrate legendary ability to not fall over when pushed to the front line

Lucky London plod have been gently nudged down the Microsoft 365 staircase with the cloudy platform rolled out to Metropolitan Police employees.

In news that will leave criminals positively paralysed with fear, Microsoft and the Metropolitan Police Service have buddied up to tackle London crime.

By "buddied up" we mean that one has spanked some serious cash on licences from the other.

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police Service told The Register that, in total, 61,000 mailboxes were migrated as part of the rollout under a national contract for policing.

Microsoft also boasted that 45,000 lucky users had been migrated to Office 365.

The thinking goes that with the efficiencies introduced through the shiny new platform, Met employees will be spend more time working with communities. Or waiting for things to grind back into life following the latest outage.

Those nervous about the thought of officers prodding fondleslabs while on patrol will be relieved to learn that data is protected through use of Advanced Threat Protection and E5 features such as message encryption and advanced information protection. The former can enforce policies such as Encrypt Only and Do Not Forward as well as reading protected messages in Outlook while the latter is more about data loss prevention and encryption across Exchange Online, Skype for Business, and SharePoint Online.

With the Met given the green light to use Azure back in 2017, Microsoft is also looking forward to working with Blighty's hard-working coppers to "develop innovative investigation processes" using the company's cloudy facilities, including storage and scalable compute.

Still, with new toys afforded by Microsoft 365 such as document access control and legal hold capabilities in email, Met CIO Angus McCallum was bullish, saying: "Technology gives our evidence greater integrity and gives us greater legitimacy."

McCallum is one of the brains behind the 2017-2020 One Met Digital Policing Strategy (PDF), the aims of which included opening a window to banish the lingering stench of Windows XP and hopping aboard the "Cloud First" train.

Office 365 was also mooted in the plan as the "core office productivity platform", and so here we are. ®