Microsoft Exchange Online Protection

For any organization, cybersecurity is one of the most important aspects of successful business growth. Email spam in all active business or personal accounts synced with the work device are constantly under threat of malicious content and different tools used by cybercriminals around the globe. There are various specifically designed email spam that can evade policy-based filters putting our data in jeopardy. To protect our inbox from an evolving threat around the globe, we users need a strong protection policy for our hosted email. 

Microsoft brings one of the top-notch products from their bag of security features for Office 365 users and also on-premise SMTP email solution. 

Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP) is a hosted email filtering and security feature that protects the email from spam and malware spread through email. Previously known as Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) falls under the part of the Exchange Online Services. 

Microsoft EOP can be used in three different ways:

• As a Part of Exchange Online: In the Microsoft Office 365 hosted email feature, Microsoft EOP comes as a part of the built-in security feature. Apart from EOP there is also Deep Content Analysis and Advanced Threat Protection in the security feature. 

• In a Standalone On-premises: Be it any on-premise SMTP email solution, the Microsoft EOP provides cloud-based email protection to the mailing servers. 

• In a Hybrid Configuration: In case of hybrid on-premise and cloud-based mailboxes, Microsoft EOP can be configured in such a way that they provide the same security policy to the messaging environment and also control the mail routing. 

Both inbound and outbound mails for the above-mentioned setups travel through EOP for spam and malicious content scan. This feature also works if the customer uses a 3rd party scanning application or uses a routing facility through an on-premise server. 

How to access Exchange Online Protection 

The Microsoft EOP features are available in the Exchange Admin Center. One needs to open the Protection section of the Exchange Admin Center. The Protection feature consists of different components in different subsections like 

• Malware filter- The Malware filtration policy setting mainly provides customization for notifications along with blocking specific file types which is more likely to be harmful. 

• Connection Filter- Microsoft Exchange Online Protection uses Connection Filtering policy to blacklist or whitelist any email id based on the IP address of the source. 

• Spam Filter- Using the Microsoft Exchange Online Protection Spam Filtering policy provides a detailed customization of EOP based on the content of the emails. 

• Outbound Spam- One of the key features of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection Outbound Spam filtration policy is to detect and block outbound spam sent by the users in your own organization. Usually, it is used in Outlook to send bulk email for marketing purposes. 

In these policy settings, a default policy is applied to the entire tenant. There are additional steps like DKIM which is used to identify forged sender addresses in the email also called email spoofing which is mostly used in phishing and email spam. Microsoft Exchange Online Protection allows the users to get an 80% protection from the server level with the multilayered security feature. The remaining 20% of protection comes from the O365 Exchange Admin Center Protection policy options where we can customize our very own security functions. 

Since Microsoft EOP does not require any hardware or software to install, manage or maintain, it reduces the need for in-house email security servers and applications. One of the key features of EOP is that it eliminates threats before they reach the corporate firewall using its anti-spam and anti-malware protection policy.