Microsoft 365 is currently the most popular cloud email platform for organizations globally. And it’s easy to see why; it’s a powerful tool for collaboration, productivity, and communication.
Unfortunately, because the tool so widely used, this makes it a prime channel for cybercriminals to target users with email threats such as phishing, malware and ransomware.
To prevent this, Microsoft offers an email security solution designed to work natively with Microsoft 365: Exchange Online Protection (EOP). EOP is a cloud-based email filtering service that’s designed to protect users against spam, malware and other known email threats. This solution is included as standard in all Microsoft 365 organizations using Exchange Online mailboxes.
EOP filters all incoming email messages to look for malware and checking against pre-set policy filtering rules. EOP also enables content filtering, looking for signs of spam, phishing or spoofing, and moving suspicious emails into a quarantine or junk folder.
While EOP provides a good basic level of protection against known malware attacks, where it falls short is on protecting against sophisticated zero-day malware delivered via email, or sophisticated social engineering attempts that exploit the email channel to trick users. For these threats, many organizations will wish to look for an alternative email security solution to secure Microsoft 365 users.
In this guide, we’ll highlight the top alternatives to Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, based on features, reporting, and admin controls. We’ll cover a range of solutions, including secure email gateways, cloud email security solutions and outbound email security solutions.