Today, over 270 million people use Microsoft Teams, as it is an efficient collaborative platform. With this increase in users, malware and phishing attacks also sneak into the peak. In these hybrid work environments, all we need is strong security for our collaborative platforms, right? Therefore, Microsoft started to equip Teams with several strong security measures, and now in the list, Microsoft introduced a ‘Zero-hour auto purge‘ for Microsoft Teams. ZAP behaves as an extra layer of defense to safeguard Teams users and protect against potential security threats.
Let’s dive deeper into this blog to know how ZAP in Microsoft Teams effectively helps in message protection.
Enhancements to Microsoft Teams’ Security
Microsoft has taken several steps to enhance message protection in Teams to ensure the security of sensitive information. And some of them are,
Safe links-Microsoft introduced safe links in Microsoft Teams to scan every incoming URL shared in group chats and Teams’ conversations. Once a suspicious URL is detected, it prevents the users from entering the spam website and protects the end users from ransomware attacks.
Report malicious messages– Also, Microsoft offers users the ability to report messages in Microsoft Teams immediately. When users report a message, the security team gets notified and can review the reported message through Microsoft 365 Defender.
Zero-hour auto purge– Sophisticated cyber-attacks can rapidly propagate across an entire organization, causing widespread damage and compromising sensitive data. In this situation, the speed at which the SecOps unit can respond is somewhat difficult. So, Microsoft now brought zero-hour auto purge to Microsoft Teams. This new security feature will greatly enhance Microsoft Teams’ security and make it even more secure.
What is Zero-hour Auto Purge?
This protective feature is already showing its real-time email protection in Exchange Online. Zero-hour auto purge in Exchange Online is a security feature that detects phishing, spam, and malware messages after they’ve landed in your inbox.
ZAP is a feature in Exchange Online Protection (EOP) that scans users’ messages and automatically quarantines or blocks malicious emails from a user’s inbox in real time. Now, this has been brought to Microsoft Teams too! Therefore, let’s see how it aids every Teams user in the following section.
Zero-hour Auto Purge in Microsoft Teams
We all know that most of the sensitive data and business-critical data are shared via Microsoft Teams. That’s why this Microsoft Teams becomes an eye-catching thing for the attackers! And, now the Zero-hour auto purge in Microsoft Teams comes as a secondhand to rescue everyone!
Note: Unlike Exchange Online, ZAP is available only for users with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 E5 and Defender for Office P2 subscriptions to enhance Teams web/client security.
If a Teams chat is identified as malicious after delivery, ZAP will scan the entire Teams environment and quarantine the relevant messages with similar threat indicators. Subsequently, the security teams will further analyze the quarantined messages to take necessary actions and safeguard the organization. Moreover, this message is blocked for both the recipient and the sender.
Zero-hour auto purge (ZAP) detects high confidence phishing and malware messages and it immediately blocks and quarantine these malicious messages.
When ZAP removes a message in Microsoft Teams, it’ll automatically show the message in the below format for both the sender and receiver.
Point to remember: ZAP only applies to messages in Team’s chat and in meetings within the organization.
Benefits of having ZAP in Microsoft Teams
Having ZAP in Microsoft Teams can help improve user safety and protect against potential security threats. Some of the key benefits are,
Automated response: ZAP can automatically respond to malicious message threats and take response action, such as quarantining the message, notifying the security team, thereby reducing the risk of accidental or intentional data sharing is significantly reduced.
Enhance user’s security: ZAP prevent users from clicking on links or downloading attachments that could potentially contain malwares.
Data protection: ZAP in Microsoft Teams helps to maintain control over sensitive data and prevent data leaks, while also complying with data protection regulations and it also reduces the amount of time users spend dealing with spam and other unwanted messages.
Enhance Microsoft Teams Security with AdminDroid
While the malware defender Zero-hour auto purge provides some protection against cyber-attacks, attackers can still carry off data stealing in several ways within Teams. Therefore, it is crucial to implement effective measures to prevent phishing attempts, malware intrusions, and other potential security breaches from compromising the Teams security.
Thus, to enhance the Teams security to the next level, AdminDroid comes in! With AdminDroid Microsoft 365 reporter, admins can efficiently audit Microsoft Teams with comprehensive information on Teams user activities, file transfers, Teams usage analytics, sign-in activities, etc., With these drilled down insights you can be able to keep track of suspicious activities within the Teams.
| AdminDroid Teams Reporting Tool | AdminDroid Teams Auditing Tool |
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Teams Membership Report -Assigning the right roles to individuals is indeed a crucial aspect of data security. Below are the Teams membership reports by AdminDroid, which helps you to review your membership settings in Microsoft Teams.
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Teams Membership Changes– It’s crucial to manage team membership changes effectively to ensure that only authorized individuals have access to sensitive information. You can easily manage user’s membership changes with AdminDroid’s Teams membership changes report.
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Teams Channel Report– Adding unauthorized users may result in data leakages. So, to ensure optimal security in Teams, admins can regularly review Teams channel reports using AdminDroid.
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Teams Auditing Report– It is crucial to audit the login activities of the users as they might access Teams from multiple locations and IP addresses, posing a security risk. Therefore, admins can make use of AdminDroid and gain clear insights into Teams users’ activities and settings.
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Teams Usage Activity – Monitoring user activities helps you to identify the daily activities of the users, enabling you to differentiate normal behavior from potentially suspicious activities. To help you with this, AdminDroid provides Teams user activities reports.
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Teams File Activities– Sometimes malicious files can be shared by the users, which may lead to data leakages/ data breaches incidents. so it is needed to keep an eye on file-sharing activities. To help you with this, AdminDroid avails the following reports.
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Inactive User Accounts – When user accounts remain inactive for an extended period, they become targets for attackers who aim to compromise accounts. Hence, ensure to proactively identify inactive users within the Teams platform with AdminDroid.
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DLP Actions- It is necessary to monitor O365 DLP policies to identify suspicious, malicious activities, leading to sensitive information leakages. However, AdminDroid DLP reports enable you to protect your Microsoft Teams from potential security threats.
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This way, AdminDroid is the best tool to secure Microsoft Teams effortlessly. With the above reports, you can identify potential security threats, thereby making Microsoft Teams management easy.
Why are you still waiting? Try out AdminDroid now for better Teams management.
Knock Out Phishing Attacks with ZAP!
In a nutshell, by integrating ZAP with Microsoft Teams, Microsoft has taken a proactive approach to protect user data and prevent cyber-attacks. Therefore, build a security posture by implementing Microsoft Teams security best practices right now, to ensure that hackers cannot get a chance to compromise your sensitive resources.
By the way, don’t stop here! Updated with more advanced security measures and a new look, the new Microsoft Teams is now available in preview. Check it out now!
