Microsoft announces General Availability of Safe Links for Teams!

The global world has shifted more towards digitization since the start of coronavirus. And on the negative side, it has influenced cybersecurity. It has become more important than ever to protect your precious data cyber-attacks. To protect URL-based attacks, Microsoft has launched Safe Links with Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

Let us learn about this in detail through the blog:

Safe Links, part of Microsoft’s Office 365, provides time-of-click verification of URLs. After scanning, the software assesses them once a user clicks on them. Safe Links scanning helps you protect your organization from any malicious links.

Why scan URLs at the time of click?

As the world is becoming more digitally accessible, there are high chances of a data breach by attackers. The attackers use very sophisticated and high-end software and tools to breach organizations. For example, the attackers send benign links that once clicked will redirect a user to a malicious site. At first glance, it may look like a genuine site. But in reality, it consists of many malicious links.

Even though an end-user may be trained on how to identify a malicious link, the kind of redirect process the attacker use isunnoticeable. The redirecting process during scanning the URL plays a major role in forming an extra layer of protection.

How Safe Links works in Microsoft Teams

To make Safe Links work in Microsoft Teams, you need to setup and enable a Safe Links policy. Once done, it protects the URLs shared in Teams chat or team channels. If Microsoft Teams found a link to be malicious, it will have the following impact on user experience:

• If a participant clicks on a link shared in Teams conversation, or a group chat, it will show a warning page in the default web browser
• If a participant clicks a link from a pinned tab, it will show a warning page in the same tab. For security reasons, Teams has disabled the option to open a link in a web browser.

Depending upon the Do not allow users to click through the original URL setting in the policy, the user experience may differ. Microsoft Teams recommend you activate this setting so it can verify the link shared in the chat. It is done so that users do not bypass and click on the URL shared in the chat.

Presently, Safe Attachments can identify the links sent through a Safe Attachment Policy. All other links shared in the meeting will go through a Safe Links Policy.

How to get started

Microsoft is offering Safe Links for Teams to customers using Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Defender for Office 365. To safeguard your organization from malicious links, you can setup and configure a Safe Links Policy in the 365 Defender portal.

Conclusion Whether you’re a small or big organization, everyone has to protect their data and systems from attackers. And to help you protect from malicious links, Microsoft has rolled out Safe Links for Teams. Make sure you use this to keep your users safe and secure.