Phishing is a scam that may cost you a lot of money and disclose sensitive information. With a number of capabilities, Microsoft 365 Defender can significantly reduce this risk.
Phishing attacks pose a serious danger to the success of your company. Because of these fraudulent behaviors, your team members may unintentionally provide hackers with financial, customer, and account information.
What causes this to happen?
Since the attackers are mimicking trustworthy sources and high-level executives, the problem is that they appear believable to the target audience. This may lead to your team members not even having second thoughts about disclosing critical people or company data in the first place!
Despite efforts to enhance user awareness of this fraud, phishing emails continue to be widely distributed.
They are the beginning point for the majority of hacking activity, and they have the potential to cause corporations to lose millions of dollars. In addition, the victim may be subjected to legal action, a tarnished reputation, lower consumer trust, and a halt in business operations.
That is why safeguarding your company from phishing assaults is critical.
There are a variety of security tools available, but Microsoft 365 Defender may be the most effective. It is equipped with a number of security layers to protect users from successful phishing attempts.
This post will outline the seven most important aspects of Microsoft 365 Defender that may be used to safeguard your company from phishing attacks.
THE SEVEN MOST IMPORTANT FEATURES
FEATURE #1 – PROTECTION AGAINST PHISHING EMAILS
In the most serious form of a phishing scam, emails are sent from a sender who appears to be a legitimate company. A common approach employed by the attacker is to refer to the victim by their given name or nickname. Some of them may even use legitimate accounts to defraud businesses of their money.
A list of contacts that you connect with on a frequent basis is generated by machine learning and shown in Microsoft Defender 365. After that, it employs sophisticated technologies to distinguish between suspicious and appropriate behavior patterns.. As a consequence, phishing emails are more accurately detected.
FEATURE #2 – DEFENSE AGAINST MALWARE
Phishing emails are a common method of spreading malware.
For example, ransomware encrypts your files and systems until the attacker receives a ransom payment.
Spyware, on the other hand, may be far more harmful. It takes information from you by capturing clipboard contents, collecting screenshots, or recording keystrokes on your computer.
Microsoft Defender 365 combats this type of malware with a set of comprehensive safety features, which include:
- – The platform is equipped with a number of malware scan engines that can assist in the identification of possible threats. Because they do a thorough heuristic assessment, they can protect your system even during the initial phases of an attack. The use of many anti-malware programs is preferable to employing a single anti-malware tool.
FEATURE #3 – BLOCKING SPAM
Mailing lists that include spam are another major source of phishing attacks. A great strategy to protect your company from cyberattacks is to block them entirely.
Defender comes with a sophisticated anti-spam engine that detects and blocks spam emails by analyzing both the source and content of the message. If an email is received from an untrustworthy source or includes questionable content, it is immediately sent to your spam folder for processing.
Additionally, this tool monitors the activities of your team members to ensure that they are not sending spam emails to other people.
FEATURE #4 – SAFE LINKS
Phishing emails do not just contain attachments; they may also contain links to malicious websites. Furthermore, they may contain URLs that direct your team members to a phony website.
Despite the fact that these online pages can appear authentic, they typically demand the victim to supply some information. Furthermore, they might direct you to websites that would install or download malware onto your computer system without your knowledge.
Safe Links, which use URL detonation to protect your system against virus transmissions, are available online. It examines email URLs for malicious content and looks for unusual activity.
Microsoft Defender 365 alerts you not to click on any links that will take you to harmful websites. Otherwise, you should be able to access your target URLs as usual. It will also rescan the service at a later time to look for any security flaws that have occurred.
Another amazing advantage of this tool is that it checks email links from all members of your organization’s staff. Furthermore, it performs admirably on papers that have been posted to SharePoint and Microsoft Teams.
FEATURE #5 – ISOLATION WITHIN A SANDBOX
Some users, particularly those who are careless, are prone to opening dangerous email attachments without a second thought. It is possible for them to leak company data to probing eyes as a result, which may damage your reputation and offer your competitors competitive advantage.
Defender may mitigate this risk by opening all email attachments in a sandbox before they are sent to the recipient. It provides isolation, which means that harmful files can only have an impact on the sandbox and not your entire system.
Once the virus has been identified and isolated, the application will warn you not to open it. However, if the attachment is safe, you will be able to utilize it in a typical manner.
FEATURE #6 – MORE EFFECTIVE FILTERING
When used in conjunction with third-party services, Enhanced Filtering is ideal for organizations that route emails to on-premises systems before delivering them to Microsoft 365.
The platform has inbound connectors that check to see whether your email sources are legitimate. The greater the complexity of the routing scenario, the greater the likelihood that email connections will not accurately represent their true source.
Furthermore, this function keeps the authentication signals that may have been lost while the emails were being routed. It improves the filtering capabilities of Microsoft 365, making it more effective at detecting phishing and spam emails.
FEATURE #7 – USER SUBMISSIONS
Microsoft Defender allows you to create particular mailboxes to which you may send any potentially harmful emails.
When you use this function, you may set the criteria for safe and harmful email, as well as the mailboxes that will be used to store these messages. As a result, your administrators will have greater control over the process of flagging emails and reporting them to Microsoft.
MICROSOFT 365 DEFENDER IS A GUARANTEED SOLUTION
Phishing assaults may be extremely damaging to your company’s reputation. If you want to neutralize the danger, you should integrate the computers in your business with Microsoft 365 Defender.
With solid security measures, this platform can help you keep your system running smoothly. It can also detect harmful behavior in real-time, allowing you to take action before the problem grows and undermines your privacy and security.
Using Microsoft 365 Defender is only one component of your overall cybersecurity strategy. If you’d like a no-pressure conversation to assist you to identify other possible hazards in your network, please contact us right away.