Outlook

Spam Filtering in Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is one of the largest email and most popular email clients for corporations. However, despite the popularity of the product, Outlook's spam filtering solution has proved ineffective by studies. 

 

Why Does Microsoft Outlook Need An Additional Spam Filter Solution?

Office 365 spam filter offers a reasonable level of security, however, some businesses find it basic and lacking when it comes to highly-sophisticated cyber threats especially advanced and persistent spear-phishing attacks. Cyberattacks are ever-increasing, hackers are becoming more advanced with their techniques, hence organizations require an advanced threat protection solution to protect the organization's email.  

 

How Does a Cloud Spam Filter Detect Email Spam?

Cloud-based spam filters use a number of different mechanisms to assess incoming emails to determine if they are genuine and should be delivered or if they are spam and should be quarantined.  A cloud spam filter for Microsoft Outlook will first check the sender of the email against a global blacklist of known spammers. An advanced cloud spam filter such as SpamTitan will use run a host of other checks to check the authenticity of an email including:

• Bayesian Analysis: used to check the contents of emails for spam signatures, such as the use of non-standard characters and other idiosyncrasies.
• Greylisting: The practice of responding to the email server from which a message has been sent and requesting the message be resent. The time delay in responding to that request is a good indicator of whether the email is genuine. Most spammers perform huge runs of emails as part of their spam campaigns. Their mail servers are usually too busy to respond to these requests to resend emails. If the request is denied, the email is quarantined as spam. Greylisting ensures that spam sent from new IP addresses that have yet to be added to spam blacklists are also blocked.

Bayesian analysis and greylisting will greatly improve the effectiveness of a cloud spam filter for Microsoft Outlook.

 

How SpamTitan Works with Outlook Spam Filtering:

You can strengthen your Office 365 security against malware and phishing with a defense in depth approach. Superior email filtering like SpamTitan uses predictive techniques to block new varieties of malware, spear phishing, and zero-day attacks before they reach the user's mailbox.

SpamTitan Scans Inbound and Outbound Outlook Emails for:

• URL’s:

SpamTitan provides real-time email scanning. SpamTitan will scan inbound emails for malicious links. If a malicious email link is identified, the email will be quarantined.

• Attachments:

SpamTitan uses sandboxing to scan all attachments for viruses and malware. Any email containing a malicious link or infected email attachment will be quarantined to prevent it from being delivered to an end user.

• Phishing Emails:

SpamTitans’s Advanced phishing protection scans inbound emails in real-time, which prevents phishing and spear-phishing attacks.

 

Why Implement SpamTitan with Office 365?

The top benefits of implementing SpamTitan spam filter to support Microsoft Outlook:

• Email security for Office 365

With a Spam Catch Rate of 99.99%, SpamTitan provides a double-antivirus, Kaspersky Lab and Clam AV, to protect office 365 against malware.

• SpamTitan email scanning inbound and outbound Outlook emails

SpamTitan can not only scan inbound emails for malicious URLs and attachments but can scan outbound Office 365 emails for malicious activity, such as a compromised email accounts being used to send spam emails. 

• Protection of Zero-day Threats

SpamTitan uses predictive technology to protect against unknown vulnerabilities from cybercriminals.

• Data Loss Prevention

Protection against email loss, SpamTitan Private Cloud infrastructure provides backup for your mail server. SpamTitan maintains a 2-node private cluster to process mail; if one node fails, the other node takes over to continue processing email. Furthermore, each node is located in a different data center, offering optimal back up. SpamTitan Private Cloud also uses Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL), requiring identification upon connecting to the network, before any data is exchanged.

• Business Continuity Features

If you choose to maintain your own mail server, SpamTitan offers two business continuity features:

If your private mail server is unavailable, SpamTitan holds all mails in a deferred queue for 5 days by default, but this value can be increased from the web interface. As soon as your mail server resumes operation, mail is forwarded to all recipients.

SpamTitan can store copies of clean e-mail for a set period of time and allow end users to view their e-mail via a personal portal. This is handy especially if your mail server is not available. End users will not miss important mail.

• Data Leak Prevention

SpamTitan has powerful data leak prevention rules which prevent internal data loss.

• Multi-Award Winning Email Protection for Office 365

SpamTitan has been awarded for its advanced email spam and spam filtering capabilties. In 20217, SpamTitan received a Gold Star Review and has also been named finalists for the Best Anti-Spam Security Solution at the Computer Security Awards. View all awards.

• Easy to use spam filter

SpamTitan set-up is very easy to deploy, manage and use. Support is readily available with any concerns or issues your organization may have.

“We found SpamTitan to be more flexible and accommodating than the previous spam filtering solutions provider” - Nico Visser, DevOps Manager

1-grid, Web Hosting Service Provider, South Africa. 

• A Successful Spam filter for Office 365

SpamTitan developers focus on providing a feature rich and granular mail filtering solution. Administrators can configure settings for the entire company, but also users can fine-tune filters. No two businesses are the same; mails that one company may regard as legitimate e-mail another company may regard as spam. SpamTitan's advanced features such as Advanced Content Control filter enable our engineers to apply a specific rule set to your mail flow. You see the mails you need to see and not the ones you don't! This level of customization is not available on in Office 365 standard filtering.

By using SpamTitan, Office 365 customers can guarantee: 

1. A greater level of protection.
2. A higher spam catch rate.
3. A greater level of customization/granularity.
4. Better outbound mail controls.
5. Business continuity.

 

View SpamTitan Demo

Make sure your customers/clients/employees are safe from cybercriminals by using a multi-award winning spam filtering solution, SpamTitan. View how SpamTitan works in Outlook/Office 375 in the Demo. View SpamTitan Demo. 

To continue reading here's related Office 365 Resources:

SpamTitan Email Protection with Office 365

Email Spam Filtering Essentials Checklist

Pandemic Security: Three Key Cyber Threats Threatening the Working from Home Movement

Office 365 and Spam Filtering

Phishing Attackers Targetting Office 365 Users