What is Advanced Email Security?
Email is essential for any business to communicate and stay connected. However, sometimes attackers take advantage of your reliance on email by impersonating others and stealing information. Advanced Email Security protects against cyber threats like spam, malware, and phishing attacks. It works on any email client and device, providing warning banners in messages.
In partnership with our provider Proofpoint, we’re starting to include Advanced Email Security with each Microsoft 365 plan. In the meantime, you may still see the option to purchase it for your plan at an added cost.
Select a question to see its answer:
- How does Advanced Email Security work?
- I got Advanced Email Security added to my email. Do I need to do anything?
- What are Advanced Email Security's limitations?
How does Advanced Email Security work?
Advanced Email Security protects your information by encrypting the contents of your email during transit. Even if a message is intercepted or falls into the wrong hands, unauthorized individuals won’t be able to read it.
When sending an encrypted message to someone outside of your organization, they'll receive a secure link to access the message. To view and respond to the message, they can create an Advanced Email Security sign-in, which stays active for 14 days. Recipients within your organization, like employees, can view the encrypted message without signing in.
In addition to encryption, Advanced Email Security includes other features like:
- Message scanning for potential threats
- Color-coded banners on incoming email to indicate potential threats
- Protection against data loss
- Verification of URLs in messages to make sure they don't go to harmful destinations
- Detection of malicious attachments in messages
- Quarantine of messages that appear to be from your domain but originate from outside your organization
We recommend customizing the Advanced Email Security features and settings to meet your needs.
Please note that your Microsoft 365 inbox filters will still function with Advanced Email Security. You can use any email client, and messages sent within your organization behave normally, even when encrypted.
I got Advanced Email Security added to my email. Do I need to do anything?
Advanced Email Security is already working to protect and secure all email that you send and receive. As a result, you may notice a few changes, like warning banners on your email that alert you of potential threats or the automatic quarantine of suspicious email.
If you notice legitimate email being marked as spam or sent to quarantine, don’t worry — you have control over these settings. You can sign in to Advanced Email Security, and then access and release quarantined messages, edit your spam settings, and manage your safe and blocked sender lists. In doing so, you help train Advanced Email Security to identify and protect against harmful email messages more accurately.
What are Advanced Email Security's limitations?
All users and domains within your organization must be included in the Advanced Email Security account. Other limits to keep in mind:
- You can send up to 2,500 outgoing messages per day, and no more than 500 messages in 10 minutes.
- The email size, including attachments, must be less than 150 MB (Standard) and 35 MB (Encrypted).
- This is affected by any Microsoft 365 message size limits, like restrictions set by your organization or your email client.
- You can include up to 1,000 recipients per message.
- Encrypted messages are stored for 14 days.
Related steps
- Sign in to Advanced Email Security
- Customize your features and settings to get the most out of Advanced Email Security.
