Malware

Microsoft launched Advanced Threat Protection for SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and Teams on December 5. It’s good to have extra anti-malware capabilities, but ATP requires Office 365 E5 or an extra add-on, so it might be out of the reach of some tenants. And it’s all about SharePoint – Teams is just there because Teams can store documents.

Exchange Online Protection now highlights unauthenticated users – or messages that come from people who cannot prove their identity. Instead of a nice picture (or avatar), you see a question mark for the user. Maybe this might make people think twice about the opportunity to send money to someone to liberate funds held in a bank. Just maybe.

In this Ask the Admin, Russell Smith looks at how you can secure Office 2016 macros and VBA code to prevent attacks.

In this Ask the Admin, Russell Smith shows you how to enforce constrained language mode in PowerShell to restrict hackers’ ability to abuse the shell.

Take a look at the steps which, when taken together, should minimize your risks of being successfully attacked by ransomware such as WannaCrypt, CryptoLocker, and a plethora of other variants that are ravaging businesses of all sizes around the world.

Russell Smith discusses the key differences between AppLocker and Device Guard in Windows 10.

It’s impossible for an email hygiene service like Exchange Online Protection (EOP) to suppress every possible piece of malware that attempts to penetrate Office 365. Even the broad array of anti-malware techniques will let some small percentage of spam through. Email administrators need to be on guard all the time.

Microsoft is introducing safety tips to Office 365 to highlight bad or suspicious email that might tempt users to do things that they shouldn’t. The initiative is good and valuable, but it rather loses some of its gloss because not all safety tips are exposed in Outlook. However, Microsoft is making sure that mobile and other clients see safety tips, even if not in the same interactive manner as is possible with OWA.

Aidan explains, using recent statistics, how the nature of attacks has changed from floppy disks and firewall probes, to a more intelligent system that targets human weaknesses.

It’s time to update those legacy apps! Learn about EMET 4.1 and how it can be used to secure legacy applications running on WS2012 R2 and Windows 8.1.