Recent Discussions
user-reported phishing emails
Dear Community I have a technical question regarding user-reported emails. In Defender, under “Action and Submissions” -> “Submissions,” I can see the emails that users have reported under the “user reported” option. There, we have the option to analyze these emails and mark them as “no threats found,” “phishing,” or “spam.” The user is then informed. Question: Do these reported emails remain in the user's inbox when they report them? If not, do we have the option to return these reported emails to the user's inbox with the “No threats found” action? Because I don't see this option. In another tenant, under “Choose response Action,” I see “move or delete,” but the “inbox” option is grayed out. Why is that? Thank you very much!
Microsoft Defender for Office (MDO) - Customize Results Email for User Reported Messages
Hi all, I would like to customize the results email from MDO to the users. From the documentation, I can see the option to modify "Email body results text" and "Email footer text": Unfortunately, the documentation doesn't specify anything beyond that. Therefore, I have the following questions: What exactly is the Email "body" and "footer" in this template? (Compare to screenshot below) Is the title/header part of the "body"? What type of text from is available? (Plain/HTML/Markdown etc.) Does anyone have experience with customizing these result emails? Feedback would be appreciated, thanks!Disabling Auto Align Feature in Microsoft Defender 365 Console Alerts
The Microsoft Defender 365 console has recently started auto aligning the alert screen upon clicking on an alert name, which seems to be part of the updated alert management experience. This change is quite bothersome and distracting. How can this feature be disabled?
'system has learned from the submission / mail is automatically allowed'
Hey folks, got an alert about a tenant allow//block list entry expiring. Only recently did we start getting these, because only recently did we start using expiring whitelisting. But I'm a little confused by the details, which says 'Mail from x is now automatically alllowed and the allow entry has been removed' and the activity that ''an allow entry is no longer required as the system has learned from the submission' The referenced email is actually an internal tenant - it receives ticket requests, and sends out ticket updates. But I'm REALLY curious about the 'automatic' allowing. Is this a feature limited to Defender 2, or part of Microsoft's AI detection framework for all 365 Defender/EOP? I don't even remember submitting this email - if I did, it was probably more than 45 days ago. So 1) Is this notice primarily that the entry had expired, but ALSO it's not needed or does this send out as soon as 'the system' recognizes it as legitimate, and removed regardless of the time left? 2) is there a way to review a list of entries Microsoft has 'accepted'? 3) What exactly does this 'allow'? I know that the tenant allow/block list allowed a certain set of lower-risk indicators in an email, but still blocked some higher-risk ones - unless there was a submission made. At that point, more is allowed. But there's still a limit, compared to a blanket bypass on the policy itself.Microsoft Defender EOP
We have been experiencing an issue since last week where we are unable to view the details of quarantined emails. Could you please confirm if this is related to a known backend service issue, or if there are any specific troubleshooting steps we should perform on our end? Any guidance or updates would be greatly appreciated.Searching for Activities in Audit Log returns repeated results - appears broken
I'm in Defender, using the Audit Log tool, trying to find out who changed the Anti-Phishing policy on the 23rd of January. Selecting the 'Activities - friendly names' drop-down, and inputting 'policy' returns A number of different categories + activities for stuff unrelated to Defender (ie, Purview, CoPilot in Outlook,, SharePoint AI use, the 365 AC, 'Places Directory' - whatever that is) but nothing related to Defender (the tool I'm opening it within)... The same category - M365 Apps Admin Services cloud policy activities - about 30 times, with every activity it includes. Probably 70% of the results, are just this same thing over and over. I looked into it - because I've never heard of this, yet it SOUNDS like something related to what I do. First off, on the [audit log activities](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/purview/audit-log-activities#microsoft-365-apps-admin-services-cloud-policy-activities) KB, this category is listed once, with 4 activities. there's about 13 that show up in each duplicated category in the search, so that's unhelpful. It links to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-apps/admin-center/overview-cloud-policy which seems to imply that 'Cloud Policy service' is not an actual thing - it's just a marketing/conceptual term for a functionality of InTune. Why it's not in the InTune KB - I do not know - I've made some suggestions to the KB's The first KB I mentioned does not list any activities for Defender's policies - there's stuff for Endpoint (multiple categories), XDR (multiple categories)... So I have 2 questions. 1) Is anyone able to advise how to get the data I want? At this point, I'm not even sure this audit log would PULL any relevant data, based on the lack of activities - so I don't really want to just blanket search for that date, and sift through stuff. 2) Does anyone know how to use this tool effectively? Know of a KB that is good and reliable and helpful? Thanks
Block all internet traffic except some sites
Hi, i've a subset of machines that need only access to some sites, like internal websites, office365 and av updates but i'm being asked to block all other sites. Can i use office365 defender (https://security.microsoft.com/securitysettings/endpoints) to do this? what is the best option? Thx
All Excel Macro Files Suddenly Flagged as Malware (X97M/Slacker.gen!A) Across M365 Starting April 16
Starting around 8 PM GMT+8 on April 16, 2025, macro-enabled Excel files with extensions such as .xlsm, .xlsb, or .xls began being automatically flagged as malware, specifically identified as X97M/Slacker.gen!A—when opened or edited in SharePoint, OneDrive, or Teams. Before this, the same files were not flagged as malicious, even when opened or edited, and this behavior had remained consistent for several months. This issue affects our entire tenant, with over 800 files being flagged as malware under the name X97M/Slacker.gen!A. These files are located across various locations and have been modified by different users. We are a Cloud-only tenant, and we have not done any configuration changes in Threat Policies for the past few months.Marking Quarantine Notice senders as safe for entire tenant
Our users get quarantine notices weekly. They're configured to come from mailto:email address removed for privacy reasons (the domain specific to tenant).. sometimes they come from mailto:email address removed for privacy reasons anyways, but this is fine. The thing is, I end up with a LOT of users who end up receiving these in their junk mail. We have a lot of tenants - I don't really have the time to keep checking them, taking action on mis-junked items. Most stuff is configured to go to quarantine anyway. What's the best way to allow these senders? The IB Anti-Spam safe-senders component is not Secure-Score recommended, and we try to keep these scores high. But the tenant allow/block list allows a max of 45days since last use. There's so many options, I'm a little confused as to what's 'right' Thanksupgraded from P1 to P2... how do I configure this?
Upgraded to Defender 365 P2 from P1, based on the automated responses. Kinda figured we'd be able to tweak these, but I guess not? Anyway, I'm a little bit confused about how to set this up maximally. Realized yesterday we had a 'User click a malicious link" investigation that was pending - but no one knew. When I click 'Email Notification' in the 'Incidents' window, it brings me to the XDR settings menu, with options for setting emails to notify of Alerts, Incidents and Threat Analytics. Except we don't have XDR? So I can't tell if these are even valid? The documentation on the AIR component is really hard to decipher - wondering if anyone has much experience with this, and knows how to configure it optimally? As in, how do I notify someone of a Critical Investigation, or something needing approval for remediation? Can I configure certain things to not require approval? Like... removing a reported phishing email from everyone's inbox?Automated Investigation and Response
Upgraded to Defender for 365 P2 based on the idea of setting automated responses to certain alerts. That's how it was described. Now I'm trying to enable and configure it. The documentation has bounced me around 20 different articles for XDR, Defender Enterprise, Defender for Business... I do not see anywhere to configure the automation in Defender. One doc points me https://security.microsoft.com/securitysettings/endpoints/integration for making sure it's enabled. when I open this, and go down to Automation, it's simply an empty list of device groups. We don't use Device groups - we don't use Defender Endpoint. Has anyone configured this in a non-XDR environment? What I'm encountering and what was advertised seem very different...Defender bulk unsanction
I want to unsanctioned all Generative AI apps in cloud catalogue with a risk score 7 or below. But this is 970 apps and I don't feel like doing this one page of 20 at a time I'll be there all day. Can someone suggest a powershell script to set anything in that category risk score 0-7 as unsanctioned?
Enhanced Filtering for (CSE)Connectors
One of my customer is using the Cisco Secure Email as their default gateway with a connector into M365. They would like to enable the enhanced filtering on the connector to improve their anti spam/malware protection. Enhanced Filtering on the “Inbound from Cisco Secure Email” connector: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/mail-flow-best-practices/use-connectors-to-configure-mail-flow/enhanced-filtering-for-connectors#use-the-microsoft-defender-portal-to-configure-enhanced-filtering-for-connectors-on-an-inbound-connector Do you know if there are any caveats adding a few mailboxes to the policy to test the behavior before they cutover the entire enterprise?Issues with Phishing & Malware Classification, Quarantine, and ZAP Not Triggering
Hello, We are facing issues with Office 365 Defender email alerts related to phishing and malware detection. Below are the key concerns: Emails with Malicious Attachments Emails classified as phishing/malware due to malicious attachments are delivered to users. If quarantined, they are blocked upon release, preventing delivery to recipients. Is this expected behavior? Are there any workarounds to allow delivery after manual review? Retroactive Classification Based on User Actions Emails are later classified as phishing/malware when another user clicks a link. We need better visibility and control over such cases. Any insights on handling this effectively? ZAP Not Triggering We’ve noticed that ZAP (Zero-hour Auto Purge) is not triggering as expected in certain cases. Has anyone experienced similar issues, and are there any known fixes or configurations that might help?Setting up Admin Quarantine
Hi, We are looking to set up admin quarantine as per the instructions in here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-cloud-apps/use-case-admin-quarantine We have followed this step by setting up a location for admin quarantine: However, when editing the 'Malware Detection' rule in Defender we do not get an option for 'Put in admin quarantine', only 'Put in user quarantine': Does anyone have any idea how to resolve this? Thank you.No URL Detection in Emails with Extensive %2580 Encoding
Hi Community, I encountered a concerning issue where emails containing URLs with extensive encoding (%2580) completely bypassed all detection and security mechanisms. These encoded URLs weren’t identified as links, which allowed them to evade security scanning. Issue Details: The email contained malicious URLs encoded with %2580. The URLs were not flagged or identified as links, allowing the payload to bypass filters entirely. Questions: Has anyone else encountered similar issues with encoded URLs bypassing detection? What’s the best process to submit this email to Microsoft for analysis and improvements to detection mechanisms, since no URL's were identified? Looking forward to your input and recommendations. Thanks in advance!
Allow specific user to release their own quarantined messages
Hello everyone, I have been searching for a few days, but I can't find anything that details how we can grant a specific user (not everyone) the ability to release their own quarantined e-mails. We have some trusted users in our organization we would like to allow to release their own (not others) quarantined e-mails. Can someone tell me how to do this or point me to the resources that give the instructions? Or is this even possible for specific users? ThanksXM/Laroux.CF
Hello Expert, Need your assistance to XM/Laroux.CF issue . Mails are being quarantine due to the XM/Laroux.CF and we have to manually release the mails Can we make any changes in our O365 Defender anti-malware policy so mails containing XM/Laroux.CF does not quarantine ? Thanks in advanceDefender false positive on SharePoint links
We have an external business partner emailing SharePoint links for sensitive information. M365 Defender is consistently flagging the link as malicious with no clear indication as to why. So we get the following: alerts generated in Defender emails flagged in email explorer and quarantined Defender Smart Screen blocks the safe link/original URL but displays a different URL I have already added the domain to the Allow list in the IoC. I have submitted the domain and specific URL to Microsoft for review. Questions: how to edit the Defender Smart Screen blocks? is there a quicker way to list a URL or domain as safe so users can load?
Recent Blogs
- We are pleased to announce that Microsoft Defender for Office 365 now features large language model (LLM)-powered responses within the submission workflow. This update provides security and Exchange ...Jul 01, 2025
