Attack Detection With Microsoft Defender
Microsoft Defender combines its own threat detection capabilities with AI-powered anti-virus solutions to identify attacks early – and help you resolve them before they impact your business.
More and more businesses are using Microsoft Defender for attack prevention; to reduce the risk of threats reaching their organisations. But even the best solutions can’t prevent 100% of attacks.
Cybercriminals are using increasingly sophisticated techniques to bypass prevention tools such as email blockers. And one of the sneakiest ways that cybercriminals are behaving today is searching for accounts that are already compromised. They quietly gain access, and launch a full-scale attack when you least expect it. Fortunately, if you’re already using Microsoft Defender for attack prevention, you can also utilise its powerful features to identify and act on potential threats, too.
Microsoft Defender combines its own threat detection capabilities with AI-powered anti-virus solutions to identify attacks early – and help you resolve them before they impact your business.
The importance of early detection
If a threat gets through to your business, one of two things can happen. The threat can sit there, undetected, and wreak havoc in the future by compromising your business data. Alternatively, the threat can be identified right at the very beginning, giving you the opportunity to tackle it before it becomes an issue. It’s clear what’s best for businesses. And Microsoft Defender can help with this in many ways…
Anomaly detection
This feature works to identify patterns in how you communicate, and who you communicate with. If any anomalies are spotted – emails received from unusual sources, for example – Defender will flag them. This will happen even if they appear trustworthy enough to get through the first line of defence – email blockers. While it won’t remove the emails, Defender will alert you to the potential threat so you can take action.
Layered malware defence
This feature utilises a number of different malware scanners to help identify malicious files within your network. The advantage of this is that, if malware has been masked to avoid detection by one type of system, the others may be able to identify it. This helps to pick up on potential risks and malicious files at the very earliest stages, so you can act quickly to avoid problems in the future.
Sandbox environment
Despite best efforts, some malicious email attachments can get through. When opened, these attachments can install malware on your computers. But Defender’s sandbox environment acts as a second line of defence, providing a safe space to open attachments without increasing risk. When opened in the sandbox environment, Defender comprehensively scans the attachment for threats.
Safe Links
Defender’s Safe Links feature scans any links contained within a received email and analyses the destination. If it believes that the link is sending you to a high-risk environment, Defender will advise against clicking the link. The highlight of this feature, however, is that Safe Links continues to scan links for days after an email has been received, to check for changes in the link destination.
Smarter insight = smarter decision making
Microsoft Defender is an all-round security superstar. As well as helping to detect threats, and prevent attacks from happening in the first place, it also helps you make better decisions for your business. Defender provides detailed information about any threats you receive, showing where they came from, who they went to, who interacted with the threat, and how the risk was handled.
Smarter insight means smarter decision making. And at Reliable Networks, we believe that Microsoft Defender is one of the best ways to develop robust risk management practices that really work.
