Five Things We Do to Protect Your Email
Did you know nearly 1.2% of all emails sent globally are malicious? That equates to about 3.4 billion phishing emails daily.
That’s an obscene number of harmful emails that could wind up in your organization’s inboxes, stealing your company’s financial information or disrupting your network.
Email communication is the backbone of doing business these days, and so it’s vitally important to ensure that harmful emails are blocked before they get to your inbox.
Of course, no email filtering service is perfect, but we’ve had a lot of success with Microsoft’s Defender for Office 365, which is included in a Microsoft 365 Business Premium license.
Any user with mailboxes in Exchange Online receives some security features — including anti-malware, anti-phishing and anti-spam — but those with Defender for Office 365 also receive Safe Links, Safe Attachments and email quarantine.
Let’s break down the five features and how we are using them to protect your organization.
Microsoft 365 Email Security Features
1.) Anti-malware
Malware is malicious software designed to harm your computer or network. Our anti-malware policies look for specific file types attached to emails and quarantine them to be viewed safely or block those emails from even reaching the user.
Certain file types (like executable files) are more likely to be malicious, and we can add additional file types if necessary.
2.) Anti-phishing
Phishing is one of the most common ways organizations experience a data breach or cyberattack. We configure your email client to look for phishing-specific behaviors like attackers setting their display name as your CFO or CEO.
While anti-phishing comes with any mailbox in Exchange Online, Defender for Office 365 offers advanced phishing thresholds that allow us to increase the aggressiveness of an action (send to junk folder or quarantine) once an email receives its spam confidence level score.
“Email communication is the backbone of doing business these days, and so it’s vitally important to ensure that harmful emails are blocked before they get to your inbox.”
3.) Anti-spam
Similar to anti-phishing protection, anti-spam protects your employees from unwanted but not harmful emails. We can adjust anti-spam policies to send emails that contain specific language or are from specific countries to the junk folder.
In addition to a spam confidence level score, inbound messages receive a bulk complaint level score that determines if the message is from a bulk sender and if that sender generates complaints from recipients. We can apply strict policies that will quarantine messages with a higher BCL score rather than sorting them in the junk folder.
4.) Safe Links
Microsoft scans links in emails to ensure they are safe. After you click a link, Microsoft will verify whether the website is safe. If it is deemed malicious, a popup will block you from accessing the site. Microsoft also scans links in Microsoft documents and Teams messages.
While Safe Links is effective in combatting phishing attacks, you should still be cautious when clicking links in emails. Cybercriminals have found ways to bypass Safe Links, so a clicked link could open your organization to unknown threats.
5.) Safe Attachments
Same concept as Safe Links, but instead Microsoft scans attachments in emails to ensure they are safe. We can set up policies that block or quarantine emails with malicious attachments or allow messages to be delivered but replace the attachments with placeholders until Safe Attachments scanning is complete.
And again, always be cautious when opening attachments, especially from unknown senders, as they are ways to bypass Safe Attachments.
Want to Increase Your Organization’s Email Security?
Phishing attacks are the easiest way for attackers to cripple your company. Contact us here to learn more about how we help you defend against email threats and protect your sensitive data.
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