07/20/2022
By Alysha Elliard

Beginning Thursday, July 21 at 4 p.m., IT will be heightening the security to our email infrastructure using Microsoft Defender for Office 365. Microsoft's Office 365 Email includes robust security features that protect incoming and outgoing email for UMass Lowell from spam, viruses, and phishing scams.

What changes can you expect?

  • With MS Defender for Office 365, unwanted mass mailings, spam, and other suspicious messages will appear in your Junk Email folder in Outlook. Please check your junk/spam folder regularly and mark legitimate messages as not junk. It may be helpful to add the Junk Email folder to your favorites.
  • You can directly report messages as Junk, Phishing, and Not Junk using the new Report Message button located on your Outlook ribbon. Messages you submit as Junk or Not Junk will be used to improve spam filtering. Phishing messages will be sent to Information Security for review.
  • In addition to the new external message header at the top of messages, you will now see various safety tips at the top of messages. These tips are designed to warn you about potentially unsafe messages.
  • If you previously used the Proofpoint Secure Message plugin to send sensitive data, we recommend transitioning to Outlook Message encryption. For instructions on how to send an encrypted message using Outlook Encryption, please visit the Information Security website

We are pleased to offer these new security features and will continue to push updates to this system over the next few months to further your protection. We appreciate your patience as we continue to provide you with a more secure email experience. If you have any questions, please contact information security at infosec@uml.edu.