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Credit to Author: Mary Branscombe| Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2017 04:11:00 -0800<\/strong><\/p>\n Running your own email servers doesn\u2019t do anything to differentiate your business from the competition (except in a bad way, if you get hacked). But avoiding the effort of managing and monitoring your own mail server isn\u2019t the only advantage of a cloud service. The scale of a cloud mail provider like Office 365 means that malware and phishing attacks are easier to spot \u2014 and the protections extend beyond your inbox.<\/p>\n Email protection isn\u2019t just about blocking spam anymore. It\u2019s about blocking malicious messages aimed at infecting computers and stealing credentials. Traditional antivirus scanning isn\u2019t the solution either, because attachments aren\u2019t just executable files you can recognize with a signature. Often, scammers use JavaScript and macros (including PowerShell) to trigger a secondary download with the malicious payload. And embedded links often go to legitimate but compromised sites, so you also can\u2019t rely on site reputation.<\/p>\n Even as malicious messaging is evolving, attacks are increasing. According to security firm Proofpoint<\/a>, the largest malicious email campaign in Q4 of 2016 was almost seven times larger than the largest campaign from Q3 of that year. And corporate email continues to bear the brunt of the attacks (Google recently noted<\/a> that attackers send four times more malware and six times more phishing attacks to corporate inboxes than to personal email addresses.) Of the 80 billion messages sent to Office 365 inboxes in a month; 55 billion are spam and bulk emails and over 20 million contain malware or phishing messages that could cause a data breach.<\/p>\n [ Free security tools to support cybersecurity efforts<\/a> ]<\/p>\n Even with training, relying on users to spot phishing emails is problematic. In a Microsoft Ingnite presentation<\/a>, Jason Rogers and Phil Newman, both Office 365 program managers, noted that targeted messages in particular are often so plausible that users report spearphishing messages that have been correctly blocked by Office 365 as false positives.<\/p>\n Can cloud email give you better protection? Yes, says Rudra Mitra, partner director for information protection on the Office 365 team. \u201cOn premise, you’re one enterprise battling these security issues by yourself; your network is a perimeter and you try to see what comes in.\u201d That might be difficult with the scarcity of security talent, Mitra notes. But the real advantage of cloud email is just how much information Microsoft can gather to detect attacks, using the scale of Office 365 and other Microsoft services.<\/p>\n To continue reading this article register now<\/p>\n Learn More<\/a> Existing Users Sign In<\/a> <\/p>\n