Email Security for Microsoft 365

Boost email protection for Microsoft Office 365 by detecting and stopping                                                                   evasive attacks that bypass legacy security solutions like on-premise SEGs.

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You've Got Microsoft Office 365 Email Security–But Has Your Architecture Caught Up to Catch Advanced Email Attacks?

Secure Email Gateway (SEG) appliances tend to present an obstacle to cloud-first strategies by sitting “inline” as email passes through. By doing so, on-premise SEGs alone muddle Microsoft 365’s (M365) Exchange Online Protection’s native features, preventing optimal function and diverting the feedback loop from users directly to the SEG, leaving it unaware of user-reported phishing attempts.

In turn, many Microsoft Office 365 Email Security customers eliminate the Secure Email Gateway (SEG) appliance and add Exchange Online Protection with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 to stop spam, malware, and more. However, this still leaves organizations vulnerable to advanced email attacks that leverage impersonation tactics, such as:

Business Email Compromise

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Eliminate fake email messages from imposters posing as trusted colleagues, associates, and friends to defraud your business. Learn more >

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Shroud Any Gaps in Email Security with the Cloud

Fortra's Cloud Email Protection fortifies Microsoft Office 365 Email Security simply, cost-effectively, and efficiently while stopping:

Business email compromise and spear phishing attacks

Low-volume, highly targeted attacks using impersonation

Socially engineered attacks with no malicious content

Spam attacks missed by Microsoft 365's Email Security

 

Features

CEP with Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 Only

Impersonation Protection

 

Look-alike Domain Spoofing Protection

Account Takeover Protection

Email Threat Operations

Incident Management and Automated Remediation

DMARC Services and Maintenance

Integrates Easily with Microsoft Office 365

Fortra’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions offer an off-the-shelf connectivity to Microsoft 365. Combined together, Fortra’s Advanced Email Security solutions and Microsoft 365 provide a single integrated architecture for detection, prevention, and remediation of all types of advanced email threats that leverage identity deception tactics.

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Security Awareness Training (SAT)

Supplement Your Security Awareness with Simulations

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Secure Email Gateway (SEG)

Fortify Your DLP Defenses with a SEG

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Cloud Email Protection (CEP)

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Suspicious Email Analysis (SEA)

SEE What SEA Can Do for You

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How Do Organizations Mitigate These Threats?

Ravisha Chugh, Product Marketing Lead at Fortra and former Senior Principal Analyst at Gartner, recommends employing “. . . email security solutions that include anti-phishing technology for targeted BEC protection that use AI to detect communication patterns and conversation-style anomalies. . .” It also promulgates “select products that can provide strong supply chain and AI-driven contact chain analysis for deeper inspection and can detect socially engineered, impersonated, or BEC attacks.”

In simpler terms, enterprise organizations need an extra layer of defense to augment Office 365 Email Security for sophisticated threats that bypass SEGs or other legacy security defenses, such as this Office 365 lure:

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Benefits of Augmenting Microsoft Office 365 Email Security with Fortra's Cloud Email Protection

Advanced Data Science

Cloud Email Protection uses machine learning, large language models (LLMs), and neural networks to evaluate email legitimacy.

Cloud-Native Architecture

Cloud Email Protection's native architecture allows for seamless integration with Exchange Online and Azure Active Directory.

Advanced Analytics

Intuitive executive dashboard helps you to quantify the value of protecting Microsoft 365 with Cloud Email Protection.

Yes, Office 365's standard Exchange Online Protection does offer a level of email protection to prevent broad, volume-based, known attacks. However, you must upgrade to one of their higher enterprise-tiered plans–like E5–to receive more protection against advanced unknown and emerging email attacks.

If you want even further detection capability, you then need to tack on another tier–P1–to receive Defender, which can protect your organization from zero-day malware, phishing attacks, and BEC. Lastly, if you want Office 365's soup-to-nuts offering, you would need to shell out more with its P2 tier, which adds on post-breach investigation, hunting, response, automation, and security awareness training.

Or, you could just get Fortra's Cloud Email Protection for the protection, detection, investigation/analysis, response, and automated remediation all in one. Then, the only add-on you would need for your employees would be Fortra's Terranova Security for security awareness training and phishing simulations.

In an annualized study conducted by Fortra's research team in 2023 of the various threat types, sole Microsoft 365 end users reported over 10 response-based attacks, more than 10 link-based attacks, and about 10 payload-based per a 100-mailbox sample set.

As a comparison, when using a control set of various SEG appliances, the best-performing SEG reported half the amount of response-based, a third the amount of link-based, and only a couple of payload-based attacks per 100 mailboxes.

According to Gartner, Microsoft alone lacks the ability to detect and eradicate 20% of advanced email threats. And given the on-premise SEG metrics above, it's no surprise that industry analysts like Gartner recommend a multi-tiered architecture for cloud email security, such as an integrated cloud email security (ICES) solution. These address the capability gaps of Microsoft when it comes to sophisticated attack that can evade legacy defense controls, and can generally be deployed via API-based solutions or routed solution between Exchange and the enterprise mailbox.

The best way to shore up your email security posture is to augment your security with a solution that can ward off phishing and impersonation threats using identity-based threat detection. By implementing tools like advanced data science, global threat intelligence feeds, email threat operations teams, automated and continuous remediation services and more, you can fortify your organization's defenses to catch, analyze, and respond to threats at enterprise scale and efficiently.

And only an ICES platform like Fortra's Cloud Email Protection can do all of these things at once.

Solutions

Protect Your Organization from Costly Advanced Email Attacks

Cloud Email Protection

Combines data science, threat intelligence, and automated remediation to stop threats that bypass traditional defenses.
DMARC Protection

Monitors your DMARC policies to prevent email spoofing and ensure deliverability while maintaining email provider requirements.
Secure Email Gateway

Delivers spam protection, anti-phishing, sandboxing, DLP, and other capabilities in an on-premise or virtual appliance.
Security Awareness Training

Transforms end users into a powerful layer of security via engaging training courses, realistic simulations, and gamified learning.
Suspicious Email Analysis

Triages and automatically responds to user-reported emails, identifying real threats quickly and ensuring timely feedback.
Threat Intelligence Services

Disrupts threat actors, prevents fraud, and enriches security controls by delivering critical insight before attacks strike.

Fortra Advanced Email Security solutions can be deployed alongside Microsoft Office 365 Email Security packages to ensure your organization’s valuable information remains secure — whether it’s housed on-premise, in the cloud, or a hybrid version.

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