More Changes Coming for Exchange Online Protection

Exchange Online Protection (EOP) will receive new management, reporting, and spam-blocking features, and an increase in the number of domains will help Office 365 administrators in large organizations. EOP is a Microsoft-hosted service that filters e-mail messages before they reach the destination organization. It is used by Office 365 to filter and block e-mail traffic, and it can dramatically cut down on an organization’s e-mail traffic, since it can block spam before it enters the organization’s network, and protect an organization from viruses and other malware. Enhanced IPV6 support, subdomain matching, and other improvements will be announced at the Microsoft Exchange Conference 2014 during the first week of Apr. 2014.

Changes Mostly Benefit Administrators

Announced in Feb. 2014, the enhancements to EOP include the following:

Directory-based edge blocking (DBEB). DBEB can eliminate e-mail sent to invalid addresses. Administrators add valid mail-enabled users to the Microsoft-hosted Windows Azure Active Directory service, and EOP will block all messages sent to users not listed there.