Cloud Connect August 2018

Product Spotlight :

We’re proud to announce that due to our ever-better relationship with Microsoft, we’ve been granted a (singular) Azure Cloud Consult! We’d love to use this opportunity to sit with you, our chosen customer, and go over your existing environment and see how we can use Azure to save you money and optimize business processes.

Microsoft is holding us to a deadline of August 30th to get this scheduled, so don’t delay! This consult will be scheduled on a first come, first served basis.

Question of the Month :

  • I got a notification from Microsoft that they’re adding anti-spoofing protections. I want this protection; how do I get it?

No actions required. Just wait until September 1st! In the past, this was a feature that was reserved for organizations with Office 365 Enterprise E5 licenses. Microsoft has now chosen to extend this coverage for organizations with Business Premium licenses or better.

After this change takes place, your organization will have access to enhanced anti-spoofing functionality that utilizes cloud intelligence, sender reputation plus patterns to identify potentially malicious domain spoofing attempts. The new functionality works in conjunction with existing standards-based email authentication checks (DMARC/DKIM/SPF). Once this feature is enabled, messages that fail our extended implicit authentication checks will be automatically sent to the junk mail folder. You can use policies to customize these actions and turn this functionality on and off.

We are also updating the Get/Set-PhishFilterPolicy cmdlet to allow you to block/allow domains that can send spoofed emails, as well as the Get/Set-AntiphishPolicy cmdlet to let you modify the policies applied to spoofed messages. After the cmdlet changes, we will also roll out policy options in the Security and Compliance Center.

If you have domain ‘allow’ or ‘safe’ sender policies or transport rules in place, they will not be impacted.

Policy options for these changes will be available after September 1. We’ll begin rolling this out and will be enforcing changes after September 21, 2018. We anticipate rollout completion in the following weeks.

  • What do I need to do to prepare for this change?

If you wish to disable enhanced anti-spoofing functionality, you will need to set policies before September 21, 2018. After September 21, we will begin rolling this feature out worldwide and will enforce the available settings.

To access settings and make changes you’ll need to use Get/set-Antiphishpolicy PowerShell cmdlets (after September 1). The same will also be possible via the Security and Compliance Center (under Threat Management->Policy->Anti-Phishing) once those changes are rolled out for EOP.

  • None of what you said makes sense! I just want to be protected from spoofing! Can you help me make sure I’m set up when the time comes?

Of course! Just reach out to us at [email protected] and we’ll be happy to get you protected against spoofing.