Threat Protection (part 2)

By Ashwin Venugopal -

 





To read part 1, please click here 




Zero-Hour Auto Purge (ZAP)

It's an email protection feature present in Microsoft 365 that can retroactively detect as well as neutralize malicious phishing, spam, or malware messages that have already been delivered to Exchange Online mailboxes. 

By default, ZAP is available with the default Exchange Online Protection (EOP) that's included with any Office 365 subscription containing Exchange Online mailboxes. It doesn't work in standalone EOP environments that protect on-premises Exchange mailboxes.

How ZAP works?

Although Microsoft Office 365 updates spam as well as malware signatures on daily basis, users can still receive malicious messages due to various reasons, including if content is weaponized after being delivered to users. ZAP  readily addresses this issue by regularly monitoring the updates to the Office 365 spam and malware signatures and finding as well as removing the messages that are already in a user's mailbox.

As ZAP's action is seamless for the user, they aren't notified if a message is detected and moved. Safe sender lists, mail flow rules (also called transport rules), Inbox rules, or additional filters take precedence over ZAP.

Malware ZAP

If you want to read or unread messages that are identified as containing malware after delivery, ZAP quarantines the message containing the malware attachments and only admins can view as well as manage malware messages from isolation. 

Malware ZAP is enabled by default in anti-malware policies. 

Phish ZAP

The ZAP outcome depends on the action that's configured for a Phishing email filtering verdict in the applicable anti-spam policy for the read or unread messages that are identified as phish after delivery. The available filtering verdict actions for phish and their possible ZAP outcomes are as follows:
  • Add X-Header, Prepend subject line with text- ZAP takes no action on the message.

  • Move message to Junk Email- ZAP moves the message to the Junk Email folder, as long as the junk email rule is enabled on the mailbox (it's enabled by default).

  • Redirect message to email address, Delete message, Quarantine message- ZAP quarantines the message and only admins can view as well as phish quarantined messages. 

By default, Phish ZAP is enabled in anti-spam policies, and the default action for the Phishing email filtering verdict is Quarantine message i.e. phish ZAP quarantines the message by default. 

Spam ZAP

The ZAP outcome always depends on the action that's configured for the Spam filtering verdict in the applicable anti-spam policy for the unread messages that are recognized as spam after delivery. The filtering verdict actions for spam and their possible ZAP outcomes are as follows:
  • Add X-Header, Prepend subject line with text- ZAP takes no action on the message.

  • Move message to Junk Email- ZAP moves the message to the Junk Email folder, as long as the junk email rule is enabled on the mailbox (it's enabled by default).

  • Redirect message to email address, Delete message, Quarantine message- ZAP quarantines the message and only end-users can view as well as manage their own spam quarantined messages. 

By default, spam ZAP is enabled in anti-spam policies, and the default action for Spam filtering verdict is Move message to Junk Email folder i.e. spam ZAP moves unread messages to Junk Email folder by default.  

How to see if ZAP moved a message?

If you want to know that whether ZAP moved your message or not, then, you can use either the Threat Protection Status report or Threat Explorer (and real-time detections). Note that as a system action, ZAP is not logged in the Exchange mailbox audit logs. 










To read part 1, please click here 











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