Microsoft rolled out a set of advanced protection capabilities to its Office 365 Home and Office 365 Personal edition.
The new capabilities will protect the devices, personal information, and files from cyber threats, like ransomware, viruses, and phishing scams. Microsoft already offers several protection and security features for Office services, such as virus scanning for links and attachments, antivirus protection with Windows Defender, etc.
The new features will further enhance the security of Office 365 services. First in the list is a file recovery capability in personal OneDrive account which will allow users to restore entire OneDrive and recover files, going back as far as 30 days. This feature, previously available with OneDrive for Business only, can be used to recover files in the event of any ransomware attack, an accidental mass delete, or files’ corruption.
Second, Office 365 can detect the cyberattacks, and notify the user about it. In case, an attack is detected, Office 365 will provide the user date and time of attack, and guide him to recover the OneDrive, depending on the time.
With the updated privacy feature, users can now set a password for links shared from OneDrive. With this, only the intended recipient will be able to access the shared file or folder. This can be useful especially when sending some confidential information online, such as family budgets, tax documents, any business proposal, etc.
Microsoft has added new encryption options for all the emails sent or received through Outlook.com, to reduce the risk of information being leaked to attackers. The Outlook users will now automatically get a suggestion to ‘send with encryption’ when they send some sensitive information.
Another interesting change in Outlook.com is that users can now limit email recipients from copying or forwarding the emails sent to them. The attachments in the email can also be encrypted, and if the recipients forward it, the file won’t open.
Lastly, Microsoft added link protection in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The Office will check the links in real-time, whether the destination website is safe or not. In case, any malicious content is detected, the user will see a warning screen suggesting not to continue.
Also read: Know why Microsoft is planning to invest $5 billion in IoT in next four years
The ransomware detection and Files Restore have already started rolling out, while rest of the features will start rolling out in the coming weeks. The advanced link checking in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint is expected to be available in second half of 2018.
Images source: Microsoft
