Preventing Questionable Emails with the Help of Office 365 Updates

November 30, 2019 by Richie KS

Threats can be hanging out in your business email inbox right now. Find out how a new Office 365 update is being implemented to help catch those suspicious emails

Phishing attacks and other malicious email attacks have made their way into the headlines as the seemingly most effective way for hackers to steal valuable information, and many business owners have fallen victim to these attacks. A combination of lacking knowledge among business professionals about email attacks and business email compromise and lacking email security features have been easy to blame for the apparent problems.

If your company uses Hosted Exchange or Microsoft Office 365 as the email server, you may have a new advantage when it comes to protecting your business messaging platform. A new Office 365 feature referred to as ‘Unverified Sender’ may be able to help you thwart attacks from unverified senders who would normally make their way to your Outlook inbox at work.
Philadelphia IT support professional Scott Clarke with Menark Technologies looks into how Unverified Sender works with Microsoft Office 365.

A Look at How ‘Unverified Sender’ Works

Unverified Sender has a simple function: it helps users of Outlook email identify emails that may have suspicious requests. When the feature is turned on in the settings tab in Outlook, incoming emails are funneled through the security tool and Microsoft determines if the sender is a verified sender with legitimate credentials or if the email contains spoof information.

If an email sender comes back as not verified, the People Card on the email will automatically be replaced with a question mark symbol. This allows the account user to quickly spot emails that are potentially coming from a sender with ill intentions or simply someone who is not verified.
Microsoft was quoted as saying in a blog posted recently:

“Unverified Sender is a new Office 365 feature that helps end-users identify suspicious messages in their inbox…we’ve added an indicator that demonstrates Office 365 spoof intelligence was unable to verify the sender.”

Of course, the feature will only work if the account user turns the feature on, but since the feature doesn’t interfere with any other action, most users will likely have no problems.

Microsoft Also Offers Malicious Email Analysis

Outlook email protection for users has grown increasingly better to try to combat problems with threats being sent to email inboxes. Microsoft seems to be leading the pack when it comes to email servers when it comes to securing inboxes. Malicious Email Analysis is another Outlook feature that Microsoft introduced in 2019, which is designed to specifically warn account holders of an email that seems to be malicious in nature. The program uses various safeguards to scan emails for potential threats, and anything that looks suspicious is quarantined until the account user can take a closer look at the message to determine if it is indeed risky junk.

Implementing Email Protection Should Be Easy with the Right Help

Protecting your business email from thieves and hackers should be easy, but even with new updates to some of the most widely recognized email platforms, it is not always easy to stay protected. Reach out to a managed IT services provider for more information if you are afraid your business email is not as protected as it should be.