The need for corporate security has never been greater. Identity theft remains a lucrative crime, and we read about a major hack nearly every day. Companies moving to Office 365 are sometimes unaware that simply moving their employees to an online email system will increase their exposure to threats.
Because Office 365 includes a baseline measure of security – called Exchange Online Protection – some companies are tempted to rely on that for email security, believing that because email is happening in Microsoft’s cloud, their environments are not impacted.
The reality is quite different. First of all, Office Online Protection is limited because most of its features are designed to detect spam. Spam remains a large problem for email, but phishing has become a more dangerous threat. Phishing, spear-phishing, and whaling are all variations of the same theme designed to lure readers into a false confidence that what they are reading is genuine in order to convince them to make that all-important click to the included link.
