Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a feature within Microsoft hosted email that helps in the defense against potentially damaging messages. It is licensed on a per user basis (we recommend doing this for all employees), and does two primary things:

#1. A deep dive assessment of file attachments. When an attachment arrives within an email, it is automatically scanned. During that time (usually about 30 seconds), it is possible to read the email, but the attachment cannot yet be opened.

#2. Link validation. When a user clicks on a link within the email, they are first redirected to a Microsoft site that checks the link. If it is deemed trouble-free, the user is automatically sent to the target location.

Both of these steps take a little bit more time — but not nearly as much time (and money and effort) as it will take to recover from a successful attack!