Office 365 anti-phishing policy

If you’ve ever received a suspicious email or text message from someone asking you for your personal information, you probably know what phishing is and how to identify it. Unfortunately, many people aren’t aware of phishing, how to identify it, or what services can help deter these scams.

Essentially, phishing is a cybercrime in which someone poses as a legitimate organization or individual and attempts to trick a person into giving them personal information such as credit card details or passwords. This can lead to financial loss or even identity theft.

Everyone is at risk for phishing, but there are ways to identify these scams to protect yourself or your business. Let’s look at a few of these ways, then specific options Office 365 has to help combat phishing.

Common phishing tactics

Scammers use different tactics to steal sensitive information, and they find new tactics every day. As a reliable technology advisor, our job at TeamLogic IT is to educate and inform our customers. To help you identify phishing scams, here are a few tactics scammers use:

1. It sounds too good to be true. Scammers will use eye-catching words and phrases to pull you in, such as winning an iPhone 13 or vacation.
2. There’s a sense of urgency. This seems to be a favorite tactic among cybercriminals. They try to convince you that you have a limited time to change a password, update your payment method, etc.
3. They use attachments. If you see an attachment in a suspicious email that you weren’t expecting or doesn’t quite make sense, do not open it. They often contain ransomware or other viruses.
4. It’s an unusual or unfamiliar sender. If the sender has an unrecognizable name or funky email, it’s most likely a scammer. Sometimes, they will try to take on the identity of someone you know and pretend to be them. This is why reading an email thoroughly and even checking with the actual person beforehand is crucial.

If you need more tips, we have written other blogs about identifying phishing scams, which you can find here.

Anti-phishing policy

Along with learning to identify phishing scams, you can use software tools to protect yourself. Microsoft 365 currently has the Microsoft 365 Defender for your plan. This reliable tool offers policies to configure anti-phishing protection for your business.

The anti-phishing policy features include:

• Automatically-created default policy
• Ability to create custom policies
• Common policy settings
• Spoof settings
• First contact safety tip
• Impersonation settings
• Advanced phishing thresholds

Any person or business with access to technology should be aware of phishing. Special tools such as Microsoft 365 Defender can help your business stay protected from these types of scams, and they are worth investing in.