Hornetsecurity Launches Microsoft 365 Total Protection Plan 4

Hornetsecurity has released a Total Protection Plan 4 for Microsoft 365 that now includes AI recipient validation that prevents misdirected emails. The firm's Total Protection Suite Plans 1, 2 and 3 offered advanced email security and backup for Microsoft 365.

The upgraded Plan 4, called 365 Total Protection Compliance & Awareness, delivers compliance, permission management and security awareness capabilities, according to a statement from Hornetsecurity. It also includes AI-powered recipient validation to prevent spam, malware and misdirected emails that can lead to data leaks and breaches.

AI Recipient Validation also helps improve visibility into how often employees are exposed to potentially misdirected emails and track how they respond to them, the company said in the statement. It protects the end user by providing a warning when an email they are about to send appears to be misguided or contain sensitive information. The user can then decide to either adjust their email or continue to send without modification, according to the statement.

The AI-based service continuously updates its understanding of the user’s email communication patterns by learning user behavior and responses. It then automatically adjusts warnings for outgoing emails and prevents users from receiving similar warnings multiple times, Hornetsecurity said.

Strengthening employees’ security awareness

The new 365 Total Protection Plan 4 now also includes Hornetsecurity’s fully automated continuous Security Awareness Service, which measures employees’ security behavior. As part of this service, the Employee Security Index (ESI®) metric measures the security behavior of employees to determine how well-versed they are in their security awareness, according to the company. Based on this metric, additional training and phishing simulations can be adapted to an individual’s specific needs.

The new 365 Total Protection package also includes 365 Permission Manager. This easy-to-use DLP (data loss prevention) service gives admins and CISOs an easy-to-understand view of all permissions to improve auditing, management, compliance policy enforcement and violation monitoring, the company said.  

“As AI-based technologies increasingly make cyber-hacking more sophisticated and as targeted email attacks multiply, having full protection and preventative measures in place will lessen the risk of a potential data breach. With this latest version of 365 Total Protection, organizations will have all the tools needed to holistically manage risks and protect against them from all angles across security, archive and backup, and now compliance and security awareness,“ said Hornetsecurity CEO Daniel Hofmann.