Did you know that cybercrime is fast becoming one of the biggest challenges that humanity could face within the next two decades? In the digital age cybersecurity is often one of our most paramount concerns. Whether it is protecting physical goods and products or securing intellectual property, the cost of protecting our valuable assets against cybercrime is on the rise. With global spending on cybersecurity forecasted to reach $1 trillion over the next 5-years, and with an estimated 4,000 ransomware attacks per day worldwide, businesses need to be proactive with their data protection and network security. Fortunately, implementing state-of-the-art security measures doesn’t always need to be a huge financial outlay for your business. With Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection from Microsoft, securing your organisation’s network and email servers from potential malicious breaches is easier than ever!
What is Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection?
Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection or ‘Office 365 ATP’ for short is a set of security tools developed by Microsoft that can be integrated with the Office 365 cloud services that helps protect against malicious, unknown, and sophisticated attacks in email attachments and links.
How Can it Help Your Business?
With the success rates of phishing and spoof websites (an attempt to gain personal information through the use of deceptive e-mails and websites) on the rise, having a sophisticated firewall and secure network is no longer enough to protect your business. It is, unfortunately, the case that hackers often gain access to a company’s secure network through accidents or mistakes made by employees unaware of such attacks. With online scams becoming more and more elaborate, it is becoming much harder for employees to distinguish between a real e-mail from their boss and a fake email. While employee training remains one of the strongest methods of protecting your company network, mistakes can and will happen. That’s where Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection steps in as your front-line defender.
With Office 365 ATP, these emails, files, and links first pass through a sophisticated and comprehensive set of tools that leverage trillions of signals from Microsoft to determine their authenticity before reaching the end-user. Suspicious files and attachments are removed, unsafe links are tested and rewritten, and reports are sent to Microsoft for continual security improvements. Let’s look at each of these key features in a little more detail.
Key Features of Office 365 ATP to Protect Your Network and Emails
Offering zero-day protection (defending against cyberattacks that are generally unknown to the public), Microsoft’s Advanced Threat Protection comes packed with a host of security features specifically designed to target malicious behaviour in the cloud before it reaches your employees.
Safe Attachments
ATP Safe Attachments checks to see if email attachments are malicious and then takes the necessary actions to protect your organisation. Set on a global level by your security administrator, attachments are opened in a secure sandbox environment for testing and destroyed if deemed malicious.
Safe Links
Office 365 ATP Safe Links helps protect your organisation by offering a time-of-click security verification of web addresses (URLs) in emails and Office documents. Once your Safe Links policies are set by your global security administrators, links are tested for authenticity and either flagged or rewritten to correct web address where possible.
ATP Rich Reporting
With ATP Rich Reporting and tracking features, network administrators can gain valuable and actionable intelligence on the different threats your organisation faces including types, targets, and actions taken. These reports can be provided in real-time to allow your network security team to focus on high priority issues while also highlighting any potential problem areas that need to be addressed with further employee training.
Attack Simulators
Using ATP’s advanced attack simulator features, employees can be trained to recognise different types of malicious attacks under realistic attack scenarios such as a display-name spear-phishing attack, or variations of password attacks. Increasing employee awareness of what potential threats are out there is one of the best methods to help protect your network from future cyberattacks.
How can Connected Platforms Help?
At Connected Platforms, we offer comprehensive managed IT services to keep your systems operating reliably and in peak form. With a focus on security and antivirus solutions including Office 365 ATP, we can help prevent potential network leaks or data breaches and keep your information safe and secure.
If you’re interested in taking your network security to the next level, why not get in touch with a dedicated managed IT specialist from Connected Platforms today. We’d love the opportunity to further discuss how we can help protect your network to give you that peace-of-mind you need so you can focus your energy on growing your business.
