Take Office 365 to the next level, with Advanced Threat Protection. July 31, 2019 – Posted in: Cyber Security, News – Tags: Cyber Security
Take Office 365 to the next level
With Advanced Threat Detection. It’s among the strongest additions to Office 365, In the current rise of cyber attacks, threats to small & large businesses, ATP clarifies email authenticity, with little impact on the overall productivity. We strongly advise adopting this add-on to your suite.
With key features, such as Safe Links, ATP prevents users from clicking on malicious links embedded within phishing emails that are deceitfully representing themselves from a genuine source, such as a bank, government body or trusted brand name.
Safe Attachments, protects users from opening malicious email file attachments, which can be embedded with viruses or malicious encryption that can install software in the background of a PC designed to steal or corrupt data, without the user even knowing.
ATP has been around for a while, what’s new about it?
Impersonation Detection. A crucial feature, which has been added to the Anti-Phishing tools. Certain attacks known as ‘spear-phishing’ or ‘Whaling’, in which criminals imitate trusted senders, often targeting individuals within a business that may have access to valuable data, are far more intricate and tough to detect.
It’s a very intelligent service, it works automatically to spot identical email addresses & domain names that may be used to defraud other users. Using “mailbox intelligence”, ATP will regulate whether the email being received is from a trusted email sender, or a new email address. Security warnings will then automatically be applied to unknown email addresses, helping to draw user’s attention to possible risks.
This new service, among all other ATP tools, are included within the Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection bolt-on product, which are included as-standard with the Enterprise E5 license.
So, someone can impersonate my domain entirely?
They can take over your online presence entirely. With basic to little knowledge of cyber hacking, it’s worryingly easy to mask your Domain and or email address, to begin launching emails at your contacts to cause disturbance and steal valuable data, all from your name.
The biggest fear, as well as the largest fear surrounding Domain imitation, isn’t specifically Hackers targeting other people domains and sending you emails. It’s when they choose to target you, and defrauding your own business and fooling your staff.
A fairly recent example, a Finance Director’s email account being impersonated – with an exact mask of the name, full email address, and even his email signature! An email gets sent from this fake account to another member of the Accounts Department, asking them to make payment on a fictitious invoice to a bank account. The email is well written in English and has a sense of urgency. Not wanting to upset their boss, the team members makes the payment as instructed. Losing the business thousands in one simple naïve mistake.
How can I use ATP to protect against impersonation of my Domain?
ATP will automatically keep an eye out for domains used within email addresses that are contacting your users. It will work to filter-out emails (based on your pre-defined choices), that fall into an dishonest category, perhaps a spoof domain that is very similar to your own (down to simple differences, such as character differences), or from an unknown user/email address that doesn’t exist within your 365 – keeping your team out of reach.
The threat management dashboard contains real-world statistical info on where emails are originating from, domains and users that have been impersonated. With these kind of statistics, you will be able to keep way ahead of any threats.
There is of course the risk that genuine emails may well be filtered out, so you can of course view a list of all of the quarantined emails and choose to take action on them all collectively or by individual email.
What are the next steps?
If you are already a user of Office 365, you can bolt-on the ATP service straight away! Contact the team to receive support in obtaining and best-configuring the service to sufficiently protect your data, users and livelihoods.
Want to get the best cyber security for your business?
At Ontraq, we take a security first approach to everything that we do with technology.
If you have any concerns, questions or simply want to explore how to better secure your business, please do get in touch with the team for a FREE demonstration and initial consultation to explore how exposed your business might actually be.
To book a consultation or to arrange a further discussion, please get in touch.