Email is one of the most important tools for communication, collaboration, and productivity for businesses. That's why it's essential to ensure your email system is secure and compliant with industry regulations.
Microsoft Exchange Online is a cloud-based email system that provides robust security features to protect your business data and communications.
In this article, we'll explore why organizations should use Exchange Online over on-premises Microsoft Exchange, talk about the most important security features in Exchange Online, and discusses best practices for enhanced security.
We'll also talk about security monitoring and provide a full-fledged framework for responding to security incidents in Exchange Online.
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In an article published in October 2022, WIRED laid down the case for why businesses should migrate their email servers to the cloud. It cited an earlier attack perpetrated by Hafnium in 2021 which exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange to compromise more than 30,000 servers across the US alone.
The reason? Installing a patch in on-premises Microsoft Exchange is a slow and taxing process. It’s a time-consuming endeavor with a massive learning curve, not to mention the fact that it can sometimes take Microsoft months to release patches for vulnerabilities that could compromise your Exchange server.
In fact, some might argue that Microsoft Exchange is a “legacy product” that’s slowly being sunsetted in favor of the cloud-based Exchange Online. Exchange Online comes with much better security implementation and essential features to keep hackers at bay. Here’s a quick overview of the advantages of using Exchange Online over on-premises Microsoft Exchange:
Exchange Online provides an array of security features to keep your data safe, including multi-factor authentication, advanced encryption, malware protection, and spam filtering.
It also offers a number of features to ensure a better security posture, such as email archiving, data loss prevention (DLP), and eDiscovery. All of this comes on top of built-in security tools like anti-phishing policies and mailbox auditing to help protect against attacks.
Want to know more about the top security features of Exchange Online? Here they are:
Multi-Factor Authentication: This functionality is designed to prevent phishing attacks and unauthorized access to Exchange Online through Azure Active Directory (AD). It requires users to provide multiple authentication factors for permission to access sensitive data.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP): DLP is a security setting that helps protect sensitive information from threats like ransomware by monitoring and controlling data in emails, documents, and other content shared within Exchange Online.
Malware Protection: Exchange Online includes a built-in anti-malware application that scans incoming emails for malicious content, blocking any threats as soon as they are detected. It offers multilayer protection by scanning for viruses across all known databases.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP): ATP helps protect against sophisticated cybersecurity attacks by using machine learning algorithms to detect suspicious activities and block phishing emails before they reach user inboxes.
Secure Email Gateways: Exchange Online also includes secure email gateways which help protect against external threats such as phishing, spam, and other malicious content sent from outside of the organization’s network.
However, Exchange Online security isn’t all plug-and-play. You have to manually configure these features and use them in combination with industry-wide security best practices to get the desired effect. Here are the most important Exchange Online security best practices to know:
MFA requires users to provide two or more factors of authentication, such as a password and a one-time code sent to their mobile device, to access their accounts. This prevents unauthorized access even if someone obtains a user’s password.
Exchange Online provides the ability to set up conditional access policies that require users to meet certain criteria before they can access their accounts. For example, these policies can require users to be located in specific locations, use specific devices, or use a specific level of authentication before they can log in.
Mailbox auditing allows administrators to track user activity in Exchange Online mailboxes and detect suspicious behavior. It also helps administrators detect compromised accounts by allowing them to review the recent activity of any user account.
Exchange Online provides built-in reports and alert policies that allow administrators to monitor for suspicious activity such as excessive login attempts or unusual data transfers from mailboxes. These reports can help protect against malicious actors trying to gain access or exfiltrate data from an organization’s environment.
You should configure secure connectivity between on-premises and cloud environments by using IPsec or TLS tunneling protocols when connecting Exchange Online with other services such as Outlook Web App (OWA). That will help protect against man-in-the-middle cyberattacks and other threats targeting communication between on-premises and cloud environments.
It’s important to limit users’ access rights within Exchange Online based on their roles within the organization. You don't want unauthorized users accessing sensitive information or making changes they should not be able to make.
The secure email gateway is a cloud-based service that helps protect inbound and outbound emails from malware, phishing, and other threats.
Once you have established a modern security posture to protect your organization’s email, it’s also important to regularly monitor and track your cybersecurity setup to ensure things are working as they should. Here are four things you should monitor through Exchange Online:
But what if your system has already been compromised? Here’s a step-by-step framework for responding to Exchange Online security incidents once they have already happened, with the goal of minimizing damage and remediating systems as quickly as possible:
CoreView Configuration Manager offers complete control over the security setup of your Microsoft 365 tenants. It lets you configure, manage, and modify a host of different security policies across M365, including Exchange Online.
CoreView allows you to configure more than 35 different security and compliance settings in Exchange Online, including Admin Audit Log Config and Malware Filter Policies.
Why use CoreView Configuration Manager to manage your Exchange Online security configurations? It offers features like one-click backups, secure baselines, real-time monitoring, periodic reports, and multi-tenant management all through a powerful no-code interface with a minimal learning curve
Want to learn more about how CoreView can improve your Exchange Online security posture? Sign up for a free one-on-one demo!
