AI-powered Microsoft 365 Business tool to protect SMBsSan Francisco, May 2 (AZINS) To further protect small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) from cyberthreats and safeguard sensitive information, Microsoft has added new features to Microsoft 365 Business including AI-powered analysis to detect and discard dangerous messages.

Microsoft 365 Business is an integrated solution that includes Office 365, plus device management and security capabilities.

"Now we're adding new ways to protect against phishing and ransomware and prevent unintentional leaks of business data," the Microsoft 365 team wrote in a blog post this week.

Cyber criminals use phishing and ransomware attacks to get people to download viruses and malware or unwittingly give out sensitive information. These attacks can cause significant issues for a business, ranging from loss of customer trust to financial woes.

To help bolster the defences of SMBs against phishing, malware and viruses, Microsoft 365 Business now includes advanced protection from cyberthreats, including sophisticated scanning of attachments and AI-powered analysis to detect and discard dangerous messages, the blog post said.

Other features added to the solution includes automatic checks of links in email to assess if they are part of a phishing scheme and prevent users from accessing unsafe websites.

It also added tools to prevent devices from interacting with ransomware and other malicious web locations.

According to a survey conducted by Microsoft, 71 per cent SMBs feel vulnerable to cyberattack, jumping to 87 per cent for businesses that have already experienced a breach.

Most SMBs handle sensitive information and preventing unintentional leaks of these types of sensitive information can be a challenge, despite the best efforts and good intentions of employees.

To identify, monitor and protect sensitive information such as social security and credit card numbers of SMBS, Microsoft added data loss prevention policies to Microsoft 365 Business.

It also added information protection in Outlook to let SMBs and their employees manage access to sensitive data in emails.

With this feature, they can set encryption rules to prevent an email from being forwarded, copied or pasted into other programmes.

To help ensure data is properly retained with continuous data backup and compliance, it added email archiving and preservation policies.