With the proliferation of emails and phishing campaigns, safeguards are needed to protect users when they accidentally click on a malicious link. Two new features will offer extra layers of security when you click on links. These services will mostly be invisible to you since they work behind the scenes. You will only notice them if you need to be warned of suspicious content. For the past year, Information Technology has successfully tested these features and has found them to be reliable and effective.
Here’s what you can expect.
Safe Links: While it is true that anti-malware and anti-phishing tools scan for bad links, Safe Links also detects when hackers modify links to fool malware and phishing filters. Basically, it scans web addresses in emails and documents. It’s a real-time check. It does a time-of-click verification on any links. When you click on a URL, Safe Links checks if it is known malicious content before displaying it in your web browser. If the link is deemed insecure, the page will be blocked.
Safe Attachments: This improved scanning tool detects malicious content at time-of-click. When you receive an email that contains an attachment, the file is checked before you receive it. If it is safe, you will be able to open it. Attachments with unsafe content are removed automatically and you will receive an email with a notice that the attachment was identified as containing malware and the attachment has been deleted.
More detailed information about Safe Links and Safe Attachments can be found here.