This essay composed by MiniTool introduces you with the cloud-based email protection service designed by Microsoft cooperation - Exchange Online Protection. It writes about the service’s work process and main features. Read below to learn the details.
What Is Exchange Online Protection?
Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), formerly Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE), is a cloud-based filtering and hosted e-mail security service that protects organizations from spam, malware, etc. mail threats. EOP is embedded in all Microsoft 365 organizations with Exchange Online mailboxes.
Also, MS Exchange Online Protection is available by itself to protect on-premises mailboxes and in hybrid environments to protect on-premises Exchange mailboxes.
How Does Exchange Online Protection Work?
First of all, when an incoming email enters Exchange Online advanced threat protection, it initially goes through connection filtering that checks the reputation of the sender. The majority of spam is stopped here and rejected by the EOP.
Secondly, the mail message will be inspected for malware. if any malware is detected within the message or its attachment(s), the email will be routed to an admin-only quarantine store.
Thirdly, the mails that pass through the second inspection will be tested by policy filtering, which will evaluate the message against any mail flow rules, also called transport rules, that you have created. For on-premises organizations that have Exchange Enterprise CAL with Service licenses, a data loss prevention (DLP) examination is also carried out at this step.
Finally, the message passes through content filtering, antispam, and anti-spoofing, where malicious mails are identified as spam, high-confidence spam, phishing, high-confidence phishing, bulk (anti-spam policies), or spoofing (spoof settings in anti-phishing policies).
Data Center of Exchange Online Protection
Microsoft EOP runs on a worldwide network of datacenters that are developed to offer the best availability. If some data center becomes unavailable, emails are routed to another data center automatically without any interruption in service.
Servers in each datacenter accept messages on your behalf, providing a layer of separation between the Internet and your organization, thus reducing the load on your servers. Microsoft makes sure that mails arrive at your organization on-time via that highly available network.
Exchange Online Protection performs load balancing between data centers yet only within a region. If you are provisioned in one region, all your messages will be processed using the email routing for that region.
Features of MS EOP
The following are the main functions of Microsoft Exchange Online Protection.
Protection Features
- Anti-malware
- Anti-span (both inbound and outbound)
- Anti-phishing
- Anti-spoofing
- Connection filtering
- Preset security policies
- Tenant allow and block list
- Allow lists for email senders
- Directory-based Edge Blocking (DBEB)
- Zero-hour auto purge (ZAP) for delivered malware, spam, and phishing messages
![[2 Ways] Fix Can’t Save Changes to Old Office Files Windows 11](https://images.minitool.com/minitool.com/images/uploads/2022/04/cant-save-changes-to-old-office-file-thumbnail.png)
Quarantine & Submissions
- Admin quarantine
- End-user quarantine
- Admin submission
- User submission (custom mailbox)
Mail Flow Features
- Mail flow rules
- Accepted domains
- Connectors
- Enhanced filtering for connectors
Monitoring Features
- Mail trace
- Email and collaboration reports
- Mail flow insights
- Mail flow reports
- Auditing reports
- Alert policies
Service level agreements (SLAs) and Support
- Spam effectiveness SLA
- False-positive ratio SLA
- Malware detection and blocking SLA
- Monthly uptime SLA
- 24/7 phone & web tech support
Additional Features
- A geo-redundant global network of serves
- Message queuing when the on-premises server can’t accept mail
- Office 365 message encryption add-on
- EOP inspects the active payload in the body message and attachments for malware.
- EOP makes use of several URL blocklists to detect known malicious links within emails.
- EOP has a broad list of domains that are known for sending spam.
- EOP relies on multiple antimalware engines to protect its users.
Protect Your Local Data from Malware Damage Brought by Email
Though MS Exchange Online Protection is powerful and reliable, some cattish viruses can still pass through the inspection and examination of EOP and successfully get into your computer. Once the malware infects your machine, it will cause damage soon or later & more or less, especially for computer files/folders.
Under such a situation, if you have a copy of the crucial items within your PC, even if the original files are corrupted, you can restore them whenever you like. Of course, you are recommended to recover the lost files after completely removing the malware!
To create a copy of vital files, you’d better rely on a professional and powerful backup software such as MiniTool ShadowMaker, which enables to not only back up files and folders but also systems, partitions/volumes, as well as hard disk drives, with schedule and reasonable backup image management to save storage space.
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Helen Graduated from university in 2014 and started working as a tech editor in the same year. Her articles focus on video creation, editing, and conversion. She also has a good knowledge of disk management and data backup & recovery. Through an in-depth exploration of computer technology, Helen has successfully helped thousands of users solve their annoying problems.