Microsoft Teams has gained Defender for Office 365’s anti- phishing protection – “Safe Links” – to protect users from potentially dangerous phishing URLs. Additional anti-phishing protection is available for organizations using Defender for Office 365 to protect against phishing attacks that use weaponized URLs. While email is the primary medium for distributing phishing links , Teams usage has increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic , making it an attractive target for phishing.
As Microsoft described earlier this year as part of its “hybrid work messaging,” time spent in Teams meetings increased 2.5x worldwide between February 2020 and February 2021.Teams users are now sending 45% more chats per week on average and 42% more chats per person after hours.
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The tech giant said in a blog post: “Safe Links in Defender for Office 365 scans URLs at the time of click to ensure users are protected with the latest intelligence from Microsoft Defender. We are very excited to announce that this feature is now generally available.”
Given the huge change in Teams chat and video over the past year, it makes sense that Safe Links – a Defender for Office 365 feature since 2015. Microsoft released a preview of the anti-phishing protection feature for Teams in April. Safe Links click protection can scan links in Teams conversations, group chats, and channels.
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Safe Links scans and verifies URLs in real time , the moment a user clicks on a link. Each month , Microsoft systems detect nearly 2 million unique URL-based payloads created by hackers for phishing. Microsoft blocks more than 100 million phishing emails with booby-trapped URLs each month
Microsoft scans URLs the moment a user clicks them because hackers have learned to send benign links that redirect after being clicked to avoid detection.
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The company also notes the following: “As detection technologies evolve faster to block malicious websites, sending malicious links to users becomes less effective. So, malicious actors are evolving their attacks. Instead of sending malicious links to users, they are now sending benign links. Once the link is delivered, the attackers redirect the link to a malicious website.”
Information source: zdnet.com
