Forefront online protection for Exchange (FOPE) encryption and Zero download Manager
Forefront online protection for Exchange (FOPE) encryption
and Zero download Manager
The Security Specialist of our A-Team, Mohamed Rafeeq, takes on the challenge to give an insight on the important segments of E-mail hosted solution from Microsoft.
1. What is FOPE?
2. What is FOPE encryption?
What is FOPE?
Hosted service that will scan your inbound and outbound emails for spam, viruses, phishing scams, and e-mail policy violations.
Why does anyone need it?
FOPE helps minimize capital investments since emails are scanned before reaching or leaving your network it helps to free up IT resources to focus on value-producing initiatives, and mitigate messaging risks before they reach the corporate network.
Still have questions? Check the FAQ’s, it’s pretty simple
What is FOPE encryption?
Your outbound emails are encrypted based on policies you create. For Ex, you can encrypt outgoing emails which contain Social security numbers, account information’s, confidential information or your project details. Let’s take a look at FOPE and Encryption along with ZDM
Once FOPE is active on your account you would receive an ID and password from MS related to your login
1) Open IE
2) Type in https://admin.messaging.microsoft.com
3) Log in with the ID and password provided by Microsoft.
Information about encryption can be seen under Administration tab, in this screen you see the seat count for encryption is 1 its subscription based.
Let’s create an encryption rule, rules can be viewed/edited/deleted from the policy rules tab.
Click on policy rules
On the right hand side click on new policy.
Note: Encryption policy is always outbound.
All the emails with the Subject line Encrypt will be encrypted and then sent out from FOPE to the recipient
You can include addition conditions in header, sender, body or attachments etc..
Now the rule is set, let’s send a test email with subject line Encrypt
No changes needed on the client end, just compose and send it as you do always.
Compose an email containing subject line Encrypt and message body contains word Encrypt.
For example, if an email is composed and sent it to the recipient xyz@contoso.com this is how he will be challenged to read the encrypted message (for the very first time)
The file will be received as an encrypted .html attachment to the email.
Attached .html is the actual message but it’s encrypted you need to connect to the hosted service to get it decrypted.
Open the attachment
Click on read message
For the very first time you will be asked to register using your full name and a chosen password. Enter the required details and click
Continue
FOPE will send a confirmation link to your email address, this action is only needed for the very first time and to read consequent messages you just need to click on Read message and put the password.
Log in to your email and click on confirmation link to view the message
When clicked on read messages it connects to
https://voltage-ps-0000.encryption.messaging.microsoft.com to decrypt the message, this is a secured IE based Zero download Manager so no additional add-ons are required on client end.
Actions like Reply, Reply to All, Forward will all be encrypted.
Hope this helped in understanding of FOPE and FOPE encryption, which allows you to view your data in a secured manner.
- A-Team!