Say goodbye to MX records with Sophos Email

We’re pleased to announce that starting today, Sophos Email has taken a major leap forward: adding the ability to directly integrate with Microsoft 365 via mail flow rules. We’ve also added S/MIME encryption and sender authentication to protect organizations from man-in-the-middle attacks.

New mail flow rules for Microsoft 365

Ease of deployment for email security services is crucial to making IT teams more efficient. The challenge is that most rely on mail exchange (MX) records to reroute email through a secure email gateway for scanning. By removing the need for MX record changes, we’ve massively shortened the activation time for protection against email threats like phishing.

Sophos Email mail flow rules integrate directly with Microsoft 365 (M365) and use Microsoft Exchange Connector Services to analyze emails for phishing and advanced threats faster than ever. For IT teams this means three big benefits:

• Faster setup: Sophos mail flow rules connection is completed in minutes, with no delays for protection or the need for MX record redirections, which take time to propagate.
• More efficient management: Setup and management are more efficient for customers and partners, with the whole process contained in Sophos Central: no need to keep switching to the M365 admin console.
• Mailboxes protected sooner: Tapping directly into the flow of messages from the sender to the M365 recipient avoids the need to reroute email through a secure email gateway. This means faster processing time on all emails, while still providing the same advanced protection from phishing and other threats.

Make the switch to mail flow rules

You can easily enroll new domains – or update existing domains from the Sophos Gateway setup – to the new mail flow rules process in Sophos Central, and all policy settings are retained. Mail flow also enables you to protect a subset of mailboxes from the domain if required. To do so, simply create a new group in M365 and add those mailboxes that will benefit from Sophos protection. Then once M365 users and groups are synchronized in Sophos Central, this group is also imported.

New S/MIME email-signing and encryption

As emails move from sender to recipient, they stop at various servers along the way. These stops make it possible for email contents to be read, or fake replies and links to inserted, that could result in stolen data or recipients being unwittingly redirected to phishing sites.

S/MIME encrypts email messages and adds a digital signature to safeguard against this email spoofing. This makes it ideal for regulated industries due to the authentication of the sender in the flow of messages. S/MIME is now included with Sophos Email Advanced, adding to the range of customizable encryption options, including TLS encryption, attachment encryption, and full web portal encryption (optional add-on).

Visit Sophos.com/Email to view the latest enhancements or try Sophos Email free for 30 days.