How many of you have the Microsoft advanced threat protection system to protect your confidential information? Well, no worries then since it was rebranded to Microsoft Defender for Office 365. What does it mean? It means that the service is updated to help you fight against multiple threats and to keep your Microsoft 365 critical data safe.
Microsoft advanced threat protection is focused on advanced cyber attacks. Microsoft’s current security technologies and expertise are applied to search for abnormal activity. Microsoft’s advanced threat protection comes with Safe Attachments to help prevent malicious attachments from affecting your environment and anti-phishing capabilities that detect phishing attacks.
All Microsoft users need to be aware of potential threats to their critical data, as Microsoft 365 suite requires Office 365 backup to secure your system. Being cautious is excellent, while being protected is the best you can do for your business.
What is Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection?
Microsoft advanced threat protection (ATP) is a cloud-based cyber attack protection service. Detects and blocks malicious files from entering the organization’s database.
During the time when ATP detects malware in a file or folder, it locks it to deter people from accessing and spreading the malware. It then takes action according to the ATP policy selected by your security team.
Keep in mind that while this service significantly enhances your email protection, like any security backup service, it is not a 100% guarantee unit that you will never receive anything malicious via email.
Data security and management
The information generated by ATP is securely distributed and accessible only to the organization responsible for the devices and DSC. Therefore, you may need Azure Security Centre to deter any potential advanced threats that can harm your system.
On the other hand, Microsoft Teams user identities extended detection, as security information is provided via a secure channel. It is why harmful links are rare in this case.
ATP records machine-level information but does not access patient files or documents such as Word/Excel/email and does not record or share patient information. Any organization joining the service must commit to migrating from their old versions of Microsoft Windows to Windows 10/11.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a rebranded name to Microsoft’s advanced threat protection, which adds more value and additional features to help you secure your important data, such as email messages, links (URLs), and collaboration tools to protect your organization from malicious threats fully.
There are two plans:
1. Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 (formerly: Exchange Online Advanced Threat Protection)
2. Defender for Office 365 Plan 2
Plan 1: Email protection techniques like Safe Links and Safe Attachment complement Exchange Online Protection protection to protect your mailboxes from sophisticated attacks.
Plan 2:
• Provides deep visibility into advanced threats;
• Supports proactive mitigation of those threats;
• Integrates seamlessly with other Office 365 security capabilities.
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 authorizes much room for customization established on customer needs, yet,not every company will need to stray too far from Microsoft’s recommendations.
Microsoft Cloud App Security
By using Microsoft Cloud App security, you are able toidentify and resist cyber threats across all your cloud services within the Microsoft Cloud App security system.
This cloud access security broker provides multi-functional visibility, control over data traffic, and sophisticated analytics. In addition, you can raise your security posture by taking control of your cloud environment.
Cloud apps help your Microsoft threat protection environment, as many other cloud environments prevent malicious attacks and provide event management.
Safe Links
Safe Links works by analyzing all non-whitelisted links for known malicious sites. If a website has been identified as suspicious or hostile, you may be blocked from opening the URL when you click on it.
Instead of heading directly to the page, you may see a warning page. Safe Links only looks for and protects you from email theft links/websites known to contain malware, email attachments, and SharePoint and OneDrive links.
Safe Links also scans email, SharePoint, and OneDrive to identify phishing links and links to websites it is malicious.
Safe Attachments
Office 365 Secure Attachments is a feature of Microsoft 365’s advanced threat protection. We’ve already mentioned that it’s now rebranded as Microsoft 365 Defender, which provides another layer of security to incoming email by scanning its attachments for malware.
With Safe Attachments, attachments undergo real-time malware behavioral analysis that uses machine learning techniques to assess them for suspicious movement. If no suspicious movement is witnessed, the file is terminated for delivery with minimal delay duration.
It is crucial to note that with Safe Attachments, all attachments are placed in a detonation chamber before being sent to recipients.
Azure Defender – Azure Advanced Threat Protection
With Azure Defender integrated with Azure Security Center, you get an extra layer of security to protect your cloud-based and on-premises workloads from the most advanced threats, such as Remote Desktop Protocol brute-force attacks or SQL injection.
Putting Azure Defender for Servers into force allows more outstanding defense in depth, with threat detection equipped by the Microsoft Security Response Center.
Furthermore, with Azure Defender, you can optimize your security with artificial intelligence and automation process. Enabling Azure Defender enables threat detection for servers, providing threat intelligence, anomaly detection, and behavioral analytics in the Azure Security Center.
Azure Defender enables you to continuously assess your environment and defend against threats to your workloads and assets to support ongoing cloud and on-premises security management. Implement a next-generation cloud defense that constantly monitors and reports on your security.
Conclusion
IT security is demanding, dynamic and intensive within the organization’s infrastructure. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has added a surprisingly great addition to one’s security arsenal.
It bridges the much-needed gap between security and systems administration teams and creates a more cohesive IT-driven environment.
The agentless ability to monitor, manage and maintain devices is fantastic, taking some of the work off end-user devices and putting less stress on internal IT systems.
Microsoft’s advanced threat protection add-ons for real-time detection and intelligence-based prioritization make the comprehensive Microsoft Defender for Office 365 suite a welcome addition to IT security administration.
