Advanced Threat Protection for Email

In order to protect campus email security, KU IT has activated Microsoft’s Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). Roughly 500,000 emails are sent to KU email users each day. Most of these emails are spam and, in some cases, they are malicious. ATP can help reduce annoying or harmful emails from ever reaching your inbox. With the help of ATP, the KU email system blocks millions of spam and malicious emails each year.

Link Spoof Detection

When you click a URL in an email, ATP will scan that URL and cross reference it with Microsoft’s known-threat databases. The following actions could occur: 
  • If the URL is considered safe, you will be taken to the website.
  • If the URL is known to be malicious, you will be taken to a warning page.
  • If the URL goes to a downloadable file, it will be scanned for malicious code. If the file is found to be malicious, the download will be blocked. 

Note: Hovering over the link in an email will show more information in the Tool Tip. You will see a combination of URLs and other text: the URL of the scanner, the actual URL and the metadata about the link and the recipient. The visible link will continue to appear normally, unless you hover over it.

Attachment Scanning and Quarantine

All email attachments from non-KU email addresses will be scanned, and suspicious or malicious attachments will be quarantined and/or deleted. Please note the following: 

  • During scanning, and especially if the attachment is large, message delivery may be slightly delayed. 
  • Attachments that ATP deems to be malicious, or that are listed on the KU blocked attachments list, will be stripped from emails. You will be notified if an attachment is removed. 
  • If you find that a legitimate attachment was quarantined or deleted, ask the sender to attach the document as a password-protected archive file or upload it to an online document sharing service. 

Along with other security measures, Microsoft's ATP brings top-level industry security standards to our campus email environment.