Cybersecurity company Proofpoint Inc. today unveiled new Microsoft 365 security features designed to prepare managed service providers and the businesses they serve to securely adopt artificial intelligence tools.
The four new features make their way into Microsoft 365 security products sold by Proofpoint MSP Platform, the business unit that handles the company’s collaboration with managed service providers and small and medium-sized businesses. Tenant Risk Exposure maps authorization and approval risks for all Microsoft 365 tenants. Now email judgments from the unit’s AI come with an explanation of how they came about.
Security awareness training has expanded to Microsoft Teams, where an AI coach surveys employees after completing a course. The fourth is an AI assistant for partners and administrators, integrated into their control panel.
Daniel Hofmann, who leads the Proofpoint MSP Platform as general manager and executive vice president, said the data and channels an AI tool can reach are just as important as the choice of tool. Excessive permissions and unclear sharing settings existed before the introduction of AI, he said, and using the technology “can increase their impact.”
Tenant Risk Exposure is aimed at administrators who already rely on Proofpoint’s 365 Permission Manager to keep track of access rights in Microsoft 365. The new dashboard shows you, tenant by tenant, where anonymous access and inactive guest accounts have crept in, and a link next to each finding allows you to close it manually. The fix can also be done automatically.
Security teams reviewing a message in live email tracking can now see why the AI made its judgment about it. According to Proofpoint, this should speed up work on the rare false positives.
The AI-powered Security Awareness Service now works in Microsoft Teams. Employees who complete an e-learning session hear from AI.MY, the unit’s AI Cyber Assistant, who acts as a coach.
The three follow-up questions depend on the level of popularity of the person in question and provide immediate feedback. The answers are incorporated into a knowledge profile that companies can use to measure learning progress and identify who needs more training.
The AI Assistant for Partners and Admins is located in the control panel of Proofpoint 365 Total Protection, a Microsoft 365 security suite originally developed by German security company Hornetsecurity GmbH. It answers conversation questions about onboarding, configuration, and day-to-day security operations.
Managed service providers can also use it to tailor products to a specific customer and find ways to extend that customer’s protection. Proofpoint expects that this will reduce the effort required by providers to provide customer advice.
Proofpoint completed its $1.8 billion purchase of Hornetsecurity in December and then built the MSP unit on top of that deal in May. More than 12,000 managed service providers and channel partners now sell the unit’s products to more than 125,000 customers, and the four new features are expected to be available to them in the fourth quarter.
Photo: Proofpoint
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