Strengthening Your Email Security: Transitioning to Microsoft layered with Sabiki Email Security
September 2024
In an era where email threats are increasingly sophisticated, organizations are reevaluating their email security solutions. Many are considering the transition to Microsoft natively for Email Security as they move towards having more of their services delivered by the 365 universe and Azure in the Cloud, and its a logical move recognizing its robust protection and seamless integration with the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
However, concerns about capture rates and potential gaps in security when moving away from traditional email security vendors are common. This is where Sabiki Email Security comes into play, serving as a vital additional layer of protection.
Why Choose Microsoft Defender for 365 as your Email Security?
Advanced Threat Protection Microsoft Defender leverages Microsoft’s extensive threat intelligence, providing real-time protection against spam, and malware. Its capabilities continuously evolve, adapting to new threats and reducing the risk of breaches.
It also makes sense, as more organizations move their email into the 365 environment that the best suited solution to handle those connection level blocks is the actual provider themselves. Even the most basic of Email security settings within the Microsoft stack makes a lot of the traditional Email security solutions and their feature sets close to redundant. There is no question capture rates for the vast majority of bad email will be stopped at this level.
Seamless Integration with Microsoft 365 For organizations already using Microsoft 365, Defender offers seamless integration, simplifying management and enhancing user experience. The unified interface allows administrators to efficiently monitor security and respond to threats. If you are going down the path of Sentinel, EDR, XDR in the future, some key telemetry from your inbound email is critical in disrupting or at least shedding some light on the attack chain.
Flexible Licensing Regardless of the license level you are at within the Microsoft hierarchy, even the most basic Business licenses should give some level of protection, and as your organization grows in their security maturity, upgrading your Microsoft license to unlock more and more advanced features is more often than not a positive for organizations.
Asking if ‘Microsoft’ Email security within 365 is good enough or if it stacks up against the likes of your traditional Email security vendors is like asking how long a piece of string is… it really depends on what features you are using, what capabilities you have with the licensing level you are at and what you are augmenting this with (if anything).
An Integrated Cloud Email Security solution such as Sabiki is designed to be layered behind ANY level of Microsoft licensing, but the lower down the line you go into the Business Basic and Business Premium levels, it becomes almost critical.
Even the current Microsoft 365 Enterprise licensing tiers of E3 or E5 may not actually have advanced email security functionality included by default.
Modern Architecture: Microsoft’s Native Email security layered with Sabiki’s Unique Approach
One of the key aspects of modern email security architecture is how different solutions handle email filtering and delivery:
Microsoft have a strong capability around connection-level email security. This means it employs robust measures to block threats at the point of email transmission at the connection layer, filtering out malicious emails before they reach users' inboxes. This foundational level of security is essential for protecting against known threats and ensuring that only legitimate emails are processed.
The higer up the stack you go with Defender for 365, more layers of the engine are unlocked to provide a certain level of Internal and Phishing protection.
Sabiki Email Security, on the other hand, operates via a direct-to-inbox API. This innovative architecture allows Sabiki to analyze and filter emails after they have been accepted by the email server but as they reach the user’s inbox. By employing advanced machine learning and a dynamic AI engine, Sabiki can assess the content and context of each email, effectively identifying and mitigating threats that may have slipped through initial defenses.
This combination of traditional connection-level filtering from Microsoft and the sophisticated analysis provided by Sabiki creates a powerful, layered security approach. Together, they represent a modern architecture that not only blocks threats but also adapts to the unique email flow of each organization.
Addressing Capture Rate Concerns with Sabiki Email Security
While Microsoft Defender is a strong solution, the fear of potential lapses in capture rates when moving from traditional vendors is valid. This is where integrating Sabiki Email Security can significantly enhance your protection:
With a multi-layered approach Sabiki provides an additional control point of security that complements Microsoft Defender. Its advanced detection algorithms utilize machine learning to identify threats that may slip through traditional filters, this Dynamic AI Engine is what sets Sabiki apart in the industry, which is uniquely designed to train on each individual customer's email flow. This means that Sabiki can adapt to the specific communication patterns and behaviors of your organization, continuously learning and optimizing its detection capabilities. As a result, it can accurately distinguish between legitimate emails and potential threats, further enhancing capture rates and reducing false positives.
Personalized Threat Detection
Sabiki’s focus on advanced threat detection means it can catch sophisticated phishing attacks and other malicious emails that might evade standard filters. By combining Sabiki’s technology with Microsoft Defender, you create a comprehensive security net.
Real-Time Monitoring and Reporting Both Microsoft Defender and Sabiki offer robust monitoring and reporting capabilities. However, Sabiki provides additional control mechanisms not only on the engine and the training of it, but also critically direct Inbox manipulation if there are any hiccups with the cutover of your DNS Mail records to Microsoft.
Steps to Transition
If you’re considering moving to Microsoft for your email security and integrating Sabiki Email Security as your ‘insurance’ layer, follow these steps to ensure a smooth transition:
1 - Prior to switching away your MX records/DNS configuration to Microsoft, configure Sabiki to protect your 365 tenant mailboxes. This can be set up in ‘off’ mode so the engine is monitoring and scoring emails with its AI engine for full visibility without touching anything.
2- Once Sabiki has been monitoring the environment for a few days, review the scoring of your messages. This is a process whereby you can catch any false positives and train the AI engine prior to full production. You can also pre-train the engine by dropping any samples or spam archives into a protected mailbox and training the Sabiki engine on them too.
3- Configure any routing rules or block/allow lists from your existing email gateway and import them into the Microsoft email security policy environment.
4- Cut over your DNS Email records/MX records from the existing solution to Microsoft. With the prep work done on Sabiki, you have that backup layer to take control if things don’t proceed as planned, or have it enabled and tuned prior to the cut over.
5- If there are any capture rate issues, false negatives, or false positives making their way through to your inboxes, you can enable Sabiki into enforcement mode and adjust the strictness of the AI model scoring routine if not already done in parallel with Microsoft taking over the scanning.
6- Keep in mind the direct inbox manipulation tool set where you can instantly delete messages using the Sabiki console for individual mailboxes, or the entire tenant.
Transitioning to Microsoft Defender for Email Security is a smart move for organizations looking to enhance their email protection. By integrating Sabiki Email Security as an additional layer, you can address concerns around capture rates and ensure a comprehensive defense against email threats. The combination of traditional connection-level filtering from Microsoft and Sabiki’s direct-to-inbox analysis represents a modern architectural approach to email security.
This multi-layered approach not only enhances your security posture but also provides peace of mind in an increasingly complex cyber environment.
Are you ready to strengthen your email security? Start your journey today with Microsoft Defender and Sabiki Email Security!
Developed by Email Security Professionals and Data scientists with decades of experience to make life easier for customers and MSPs alike, Sabiki Email Security is a cloud-native 'built-for Microsoft 365' SaaS solution that protects your organization from Phishing, Spam and targeted scams using the power of a dynamic AI feedback loop engine. Powered by a 'Dynamic' Machine Learning engine in combination with next-generation contextual and behavioral analysis capabilities, Sabiki Email Security provides an incredible level of granularity in engine customization with seamless onboarding and operation.