During and after the coronavirus pandemic, your business should actively work to improve advanced threat protection to prevent and detect cyberattacks on your network. Recently, hackers are finding more innovative and sophisticated ways to exploit systems. Your cybersecurity strategy lags if you do not see more intelligent and sophisticated methods to protect your IT environment.
If you use Office 365, you will already have strict security measures in place to protect your sensitive data. Sometimes, it can be challenging to say whether an email is genuine or not, and it may seem completely unnoticeable. Yet, you have the option to increase the security of Office 365 by implementing Advanced Threat Protection (ATP).
Advanced Threat Protection is a new tool available as an add-on to your Office 365 suite. It scans the links and attachments that reach our inboxes to ensure they are not malicious.
The add-on lets IT no longer worry about staff clicking on malicious links or attachments without thinking about whether or not it is genuine. While end-user education is still vital in the fight against cybercrime, this technology reduces some risks like email phishing.
Definition of Advanced Threat Protection
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) directs to a type of security solution that defends against sophisticated malware or hacking-based raids targeting exposed data. ATP solutions can differ in components and approaches.
Nevertheless, they must contain a combination of endpoint agents, email gateways, network devices, malware protection systems, and a centralized management console to link alerts and manage defenses and protection. Advanced threat protection solutions may be available as software or as managed services.
Advanced threat protection should stop ongoing attacks or mitigate advanced threats before they disrupt systems. Furthermore, it should help to disrupt the continuing activity or counter actions that have already taken place due to breach and disruption of the attack life cycle to ensure that the threat can not progress or continue.
Why Advanced Threat Protection is so Important to Companies?
Companies are increasingly facing advanced attacks on their networks. A comprehensive real-time review of the network environment is needed to detect these cyber threats. Businesses need to respond quickly.
Attacks such as fake emails from business partners, malicious emails that are carefully disguised, and other similar attacks are always on the front pages. An increasing number of companies suffer from such attacks because hackers are always coming up with new ways to bypass ordinary spam filters and firewalls.
It is also necessary to think that sometimes email is not intended to be malicious. It can have catastrophic consequences for companies, governments, and other organizations. Eliminating advanced threats for data protection can reduce security incidents of cyber attacks and phishing attacks. They target sensitive data and can gain access to your data center as a primary benefit.
An advanced threat arises when a device or user is strategically targeted, and the attack is adjusted to take advantage of that company-specific resource. ATP shall notify your business of attacks that have occurred, the severity of the attack, and the response that was automatically initiated to stop the threat in its trajectory.
Suspicious files along with harmful links and malicious intent can sneak your sensitive information as a proactive approach. To pinpoint vulnerabilities, a hacker can study a user’s downloads, browsing habits, and more.
How Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Works?
Many business owners expect everything to be OK with their protection these days. When you receive an email with a link or attachment, you need to wait a few seconds to scan the content. These are just a few seconds, which can be frustrating if you want to open something immediately.
The way you should see it is that a few seconds could be the difference between a day of downtime and everything you do today. If there is nothing wrong with the link or attachment, the user can continue and open what they need without further interruption. If something goes wrong with the content of the email, the user is prevented from opening any links or attachments.
There are three primary purposes of advanced threat protection:
- Early detection (detection of potential threats before they have access to critical data or breach systems)
- Adequate protection (capability to quickly defend against detected threats)
- Response (ability to mitigate threats and react to security experiences)
To accomplish these three purposes, advanced threat protection assistance and solutions must deliver several components and features for a complete ATP:
Data Awareness
It is impossible to identify advanced threats that can cause harm without a prior deep understanding of enterprise data, their sensitivity, value, and other factors contributing to formulating an appropriate response.
Real-time visibility
Threats are usually noticed too late without constant monitoring and real-time visibility. When the damage is already done, the answer can be costly in terms of resource utilization and damage to reputation.
Context
For actual security effectiveness, threat alerts must be contextual to enable security teams to prioritize threats and effectively organize responses.
The Benefits of Advanced Threat Protection Services
The main benefit presented by advanced threat protection software is controlling, noticing, and responding to new and sophisticated attacks created to bypass traditional security solutions such as antivirus, firewall, and IPS/IDS.
Attacks continue to become increasingly targeted, covert and persistent, and ATP solutions bring a visionary approach to safety by recognizing and blocking advanced threats before critical data is compromised.
Advanced threat protection services are built on this benefit by providing access to the international community of security experts dedicated to monitoring, following, and transmitting information on emerging and identified threats.
ATP service providers typically access global threat information-sharing networks, enhancing their intelligence and threat analysis with third-party information. When a new, evolved threat is detected, ATP service providers are able to update their defensive mechanisms to guarantee protection continues.
This global community action plays a substantial role in maintaining the security of businesses worldwide. Companies that implement advanced threat protection can detect threats early and formulate a response faster to minimize damage and recover from an attack.
A good security provider will definitely aim at the attack lifecycle and manage threats in real-time. ATP providers inform the company of the attacks, the severity of the attack, and the response was to stop the threat in its lanes or minimize data loss.
Whether internally managed or provided as a service, advanced threat protection solutions provide critical data and systems, no matter where the attack originated or how large the attack is, or the potential attack is perceived.
Advanced Threat Protection Features
Advanced Threat Protection adds a new Office 365 feature that scans all attachments by analyzing malware behavior in real-time. It means that if you get an extension, it is screened before you can open it to see if it is safe.
The scanner evaluates the contents of the suspicious activity attachment, and if it believes it is doubtful, the recipient will not be able to open it.
Another feature of Advanced Threat Protection is scanning any email links for malicious content. The security plugin then goes further and rewrites the URLs to go through Office 365.
All URLs are scanned while the user clicks on them, and if the link is malicious, the user is alerted that the website is blocked or not visited. The feature even comes with a notification so that administrators can see who clicked on the link and when they clicked on it.
The third most notable feature is that Advanced Threat Protection also gives you access to data to gain insight into what is happening to your organization’s security. You can access reports that highlight and investigate messages that have been blocked and links that have been clicked.
Conclusion
Because of the evolving threat landscape, companies must ensure they have Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with the IT expertise to handle any situation.
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