spam

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.

Microsoft has released the Report Message add-in for Outlook 2016 to help Office 365 users report when spam arrives into Inboxes or messages are incorrectly treated as Junk. It’s a good way to get information about new threats to Microsoft security researchers.

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.

Looking into unified threat management? Check our review of WatchGuard XTM, which provides security and connects on-premise and (hybrid) cloud services.

Microsoft’s free Security Essentials product isn’t as comprehensive as paid products. Find out whether it’s worth switching to a paid security solution!