Microsoft has announced new phishing protection capabilities for its Teams collaboration service. The feature will leverage the power of Defender for Office 365 Safe Links protection, and it will allow organizations to configure Safe Links policies to safeguard Microsoft Teams users against malicious links used in phishing attacks.
“With today’s announcement, organizations with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 can further protect Microsoft Teams users from malicious phishing attacks that are often orchestrated using weaponized URLs. Safe Links in Defender for Office 365 scans URLs at the time of click to ensure that users are protected with the latest intelligence from Microsoft Defender,” the company explained in a blog post.
The Safe links feature is already supported in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft 365 apps, and it provides time-of-click scanning for links in emails, groups, and more. The Redmond giant is now bringing this capability to Microsoft Teams, and it can be enabled to block malicious URLs in private chats, channels, as well as group chats.
Once configured, the app will automatically validate all links against a known malicious links database as soon as users click on them. If a link is found to be malicious, users will see a warning in their default web browser, notifying them that opening the website could potentially harm their PC.
Microsoft Teams has become a popular collaboration tool in this new hybrid work era, and these new phishing protection capabilities should make it easier for enterprise customers to block phishing attempts from threat actors automatically. To get started, IT Admins will need to configure Safe Links policies for their organizations via Microsoft 365 Defender portal. We invite you to check out this support page to learn more about the Safe Links feature in Defender for Office 365.
