Office 365 - WiseStamp Tue, 23 Jan 2024 09:47:51 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.wisestamp.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/cropped-Wisestamp-email-signature-manager-and-email-signature-generator-favicon-32x32.png Office 365 - WiseStamp 32 32 Office 365 encrypted email (easy setup guide) https://www.wisestamp.com/blog/office-365-encrypted-email/ Mon, 28 Feb 2022 13:41:39 +0000 https://wisestampprd.wpenginepowered.com/?p=40465 There’s no denying that email security is a major concern for both businesses and private individuals alike. However, it can be tough to run...

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]]> There’s no denying that email security is a major concern for both businesses and private individuals alike. However, it can be tough to run a completely secure company, especially thanks to the prevalence of phishing emails and other cyber threats. 

Even if your employees practice good digital security, there’s no guarantee that they won’t accidentally send an unsecured email with crucial corporate information contained within.

Fortunately, Office 365 allows you to send encrypted emails to any third-party email platform or within your broader corporate network. If you’ve never used Office 365 encryption before, you’ve come to the right place. We’ll break down the benefits of Office 365 encrypted emails and how to set this service up quickly and easily.

What is Office 365 Encryption?

In a nutshell, Office 365 encryption, also called Office 365 Message Encryption or OME is a message securing service that runs on the Azure Rights Management platform. 

Office 365 encryption allows you to send secure emails to people within or outside your organization no matter what platform the destination email address uses. That means you can send secure, encrypted emails from Office 365 to Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook inboxes, and so on.

An encrypted Office 365 email replaces plaintext (including text in your Outlook HTML email signatures) with ciphertext that can’t be viewed unless the recipient has a decryption key. This, in turn, prevents anyone from reading email contents unless you, an administrator or the sender/recipient, decide to let them.

Office 365 is flexible and easy to use since it doesn’t require any client-side software. The only major requirement is that the encrypted message is opened using a standard browser. 

However, note that OME doesn’t let you prevent people from forwarding decrypted emails. Therefore, it’s not a perfectly airtight system for keeping your emails secure and does not fully replace good digital hygiene practices at your organization.

Why do I need office 365 email Encryption?

There are many reasons why Office 365 email encryption can be beneficial for you personally or your broader organization.

1. Office 365 encryption prevents security breaches and data theft

Message encryption through Office 365 could also prevent hackers from gaining access to vital information or stealing data and holding it for ransom.

2. Office 365 email encryption saves money

Office 365 email encryption saves money because you don’t have to set up a dedicated encryption server. Instead, you can continue to use your standard IT infrastructure or email server, then use OME to encrypt employee emails at a very low extra cost.

3. Office 365 encryption protects your privacy

Office 365 email encryption can hide the identity of email senders or recipients. More broadly, Office 365 email encryption prevents sensitive company or personal data from being read or spread without your intention. 

This focus on confidentiality could be crucial for certain businesses that want to ensure their information remains private and isn’t stolen by disgruntled employees or competitors.

4. Saves IT team and overall company workhourse

Lastly, Office 365 email encryption lets you take care of your email security centrally with relative ease. It may save your IT team the hassle of having to educate your employees about security, and relieves employees from having to learn new security programs, phishing protection protocols, or cyber encryption techniques.

The fewer steps there are for good IT security the better since there are fewer opportunities for missteps like falling for phishing scams and ransomware attacks.

Prerequisites for Office 365 encrypted email

Getting started with Office 365 encrypted email is relatively straightforward, though it does have a few prerequisites. Make sure you or your organization has these prerequisites before sending an encrypted email.

1. A Subscription that has email Encryption capabilities

Firstly, you’ll need an Office 365 software subscription that includes email encryption capabilities. Fortunately, most Microsoft 365 subscriptions include email encryption as a feature.

These include:

  • Office 365 Personal or Family subscriptions
  • Corporate subscriptions to Office 365, which can include Exchange Online

The latter subscription service includes extra beneficial cybersecurity features for businesses, such as anti-spam and anti-malware protection, and more.

2. Rights to management enabled

As noted above, Office 365 encrypted emails are run on the Azure Rights Management platform. If this has been disabled manually or not automatically activated, you’ll need to make sure that this platform is enabled and ready to go.

This is easiest if you go to your Microsoft 365 admin center. Alternatively, you can go to the Azure portal and sign in using your account. Then:

  1. Navigate to the Azure Information Protection panel
  2. Locate Manage Menu Options
  3. Choose Protection Activation
  4. Then click Activate and confirm

This process will enable Azure Rights Management and ensure you can use Office 365 encrypted emails.

How to setup Encrypted email in Office 365

Set up encrypted emails through Office 365 quickly and easily with the below steps:

  1. Before going any further, you can configure the management for your Azure Information Protection tenant key. However, Microsoft usually manages it, which is recommended for most organizations.
  2. Regardless, verify that your Microsoft 365 tenant is configured via the Exchange Online PowerShell. It involves connecting to the PowerShell using an account with global administrative permissions through your Microsoft 365 tenant, running the Get-IRMConfiguration cmdlet, and running a few other basic commands. 
  3. Define the mail flow rules for your OME service. Do this by visiting the Admin center, the Exchange page, navigating to Mail Flow, then Rules. At this point, you can modify message security and apply different encryption and rights protection to Office 365 emails.

Send encrypted email in Office 365 to a 3rd party service

If all has been set up properly, you can send an encrypted email to any third-party email service from Office 365 with a few basic steps.

  1. First, open Outlook Online
  2. Then click “Compose a new email”
  3. Choose “Encrypt” in the toolbar above
  4. Click “Change Permissions” if you decide to stop forwarding the email. This will prevent anyone from forwarding the decrypted email after the security has been stripped from the message
  5. Type your email message and input the recipient. You can add a signature for Outlook if you like. Once you are done, click Send

Depending on the layout your Office 365 screen has, you might not see a dedicated encrypt button. Instead, you may see three dots, which will open up encryption and other email adjustments or commands if they don’t fit the native screen size.

Wrapping up

As you can see, Office 365 encrypted email is a great tool that businesses and private individuals alike should leverage to prevent their email information from getting out. Businesses especially can ensure top-tier cyber security and make email security easier for their employees by leveraging this powerful service.

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]]> Create & manage distribution lists in Outlook Office 365 https://www.wisestamp.com/blog/managing-distribution-lists-in-outlook/ Sun, 11 Jul 2021 12:18:58 +0000 https://wisestampprd.wpenginepowered.com/?p=28823 The post Create & manage distribution lists in Outlook Office 365 appeared first on WiseStamp.

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Creating a distribution list in Outlook Office 365 is crucial. Without managing distribution lists in Outlook Office 365, you’ll find yourself experiencing a number of problems such as miscommunication between you and your team members, poor time management skills, and keeping track of all emails sent and delivered.

The main purpose of distribution lists is to send emails to a group of people without having to type their emails 1 by 1. This is quite a big deal, especially when working in a large organizations and managing departments.

Setting up your Office 365 distribution lists might look very technical, but don’t worry we will walk you through each step.

This guide will cover everything that you should know about creating & managing distribution lists.

What are distribution lists?

Distribution lists, sometimes called contact groups or distribution groups, are bundles of email recipients that function as a single email contact. Email distribution lists allow sending bulk emails to multiple recipients instead of sending the same email multiple times to each recipient on the list. A distribution list is different from an email list in that members cannot reply to the distribution list’s name to send messages to everyone else in the group.

How do distribution lists work in Office 365?

In Office 365 Outlook app, members have the ability to create their distribution lists, add themselves to desired distribution lists, or invite others to join the groups.

An admin is capable of making all changes, which comes in handy when members should be added or removed, or when group ownership changes. These changes can only be performed by an Exchange administrator, global administrator, or Group administrator.

Remember that even as you create the distribution list in Outlook 365, you can choose to hide from the address book. Doing so changes the distribution list to “unlisted” and it will not show up in searches.

For a hidden distribution, you will have to type the complete email address when sending an email to it.

You can allow members to add or remove themselves as members of a distribution list. The default setting is that distribution lists have closed membership. You can also control who can send to your distribution list or let everyone to send to the distribution list. By default, all employees of the organization can send to the distribution list.

It goes without saying that whoever created the distribution list is the default owner. It is possible for this ownership to change.

How to create a distribution list

  1. Launch Outlook and navigate to the left-hand side bottom tab
  2. Click on the “People icon“
office 365 manage distribution list from outlook
  1. Click on “New Contact” from the top left-hand side of the Outlook ribbon
  2. Select “Create new contact group“
step 2 manage distribution list from outlook
  1. Give your contact group a name, window opens, provide a descriptive name for your contact group. Make sure that you chose an easy-to-remember name and one that you can quickly search
  2. Click “Create at the bottom” when done naming the contact group
step 3 Give your contact group a name
  1. In the “Add members” section, type in the email address of the people you want in the group
  2. Then click on the “Add” option at the bottom
step 4 add members to your distrubution list
  1. Test the distribution list to make sure that your distribution list works
  2. Navigate to the “Create new email option”
  3. Type in the “To:” section, the name of the distribution list, it should appear as a suggestion

How to manage Office 365 distribution lists

Outlook 365 gives you the ability to perform different levels of management operations for your distribution list. For instance, you can add new members, add owners, remove owners, remove members, edit individuals allowed to send to the distribution list, and even hide the list.

Keep in mind that the contact list will work just fine the first time you create it. However, as time goes by, it becomes inevitable to execute any of the operations mentioned.

Adding owners to a distribution list in Outlook 365

Note: By default, whoever created the distribution list is the owner. You can add other people as owners if you want them to have administrative rights over the distribution list.

Here is a quick guide on the different management operations for your distribution list:

  1. Login to OWA
  2. Click on the “Settings gear“
3. Navigate to the Ownership section in the new window
  1. Click on the “View all Outlook Settings” option at the bottom right-hand side
Step 2 Access the distribution groups page via Outlook 365
  1. Click on “Distribution groups” to reveal existing distribution groups, from the Settings page.
  2. Select the option “Edit distribution groups I own“
From the Settings page, click on General and choose “Distribution groups” to reveal existing distribution groups.
  1. Click on the “Pen icon” to edit
2. Edit distribution groups I own
  1. Navigate to the “Ownership” section tab on the left-hand side in the new window
  2. Click “+ sign” that will open another window where you can choose owners
3. Navigate to the Ownership section in the new window
  1. Click on “My Contacts”
  2. Select “All Users“

Removing owners to a distribution list from Outlook 365

Note: If you are the owner of a distribution list (you created it), you can remove other owners to effectively revoke their administrative rights over the group. Note that removing ownership, does not mean removing them all together.

  1. Login to OWA
  2. Click on the “Settings gear“
3. Navigate to the Ownership section in the new window
  1. Choose the “View all Outlook Settings” option at the bottom right-hand side.
Step 2 Access the distribution groups page via Outlook 365
  1. Click on “General” from the Settings page
  2. Click on “Distribution groups” to reveal existing distribution groups
From the Settings page, click on General and choose “Distribution groups” to reveal existing distribution groups.
  1. Click on the “Edit” icon under “Distribution groups I own“
2. Edit distribution groups I own

Note: You cannot remove all owners from the group. All groups must have at least one owner whose role is to manage the group.

  1. “Navigate to the Ownership tab”
  2. Click on the “Ownership tab” which is below the general options. This reveals a list of owners if there are many
  3. “Select the owner” that you would like to remove
  4. Click on the “minus sign” to effective this action
  5. Select the “Save the changes“
3. Navigate to the Ownership section in the new window

Change the email addresses that send to the group

Outlook 365 gives you the ability to edit who can and cannot send to your distribution group. This is a powerful feature especially when you want the communication amongst the group members to be private without external interferences.

Note: By default, only senders inside your organization can send messages to this group. To allow someone outside your organization to send to the group, contact your email admin. To restrict the senders inside your organization who can send to the group, add users or groups to the list. If you do this, mail sent by anyone else will be rejected

Follow these steps to edit who can send email to your distribution list:

  1. Access the distribution groups page via Outlook
  2. Login to OWA
  3. Click on the “Settings gear“
  1. Choose the “View all Outlook Settings” option at the bottom right-hand side
  1. Click on “General” From the Settings page
  2. Choose “Distribution groups” to reveal existing distribution groups.
From the Settings page, click on General and choose “Distribution groups” to reveal existing distribution groups.
  1. “Click” the edit icon under groups I own
  1. Navigate to “delivery management” From the new page shown, This is to set who can send emails to your distribution list

Allow members to remove or add themselves in a distribution list

You can control whether members added to the distribution list can remove or add themselves.

Follow these steps to edit who can send email to your distribution list:

  1. Login to OWA
  2. Click on the “Settings gear“
  1. Choose the “View all Outlook Settings” option at the bottom right-hand side
  1. Click on “General” From the Settings page
  2. Choose “Distribution groups” to reveal existing distribution groups
Distribution groups
  1. Click the “edit” icon under distribution groups I own
  1. Navigate to the “membership approval” section to set what members are able to do
  1. Options to choose from

There are 3 options shown here:

  • Open: Choose the Open option if you want anyone to join and leave the distribution group without owner approval.
  • Closed: Closed option means members can only be added by group owners. Any request to join is automatically rejected.
  • Owner approval: Owner approval will require the group owners to approve any requests to join.
manage distribution list from outlook membership approval

Hiding the distribution list from Outlook Address Book

By default, when you create the distribution list, it shows up on the Outlook Address Book. However, you can disable this by hiding it so that only those who know the distribution list can type it in the “To:” section of the email composed.

Note: this setting stops Outlook from auto-completing the email when users type it.

  1. Login to OWA
  2. Click on the “Settings gear”
  1. Choose the “View all Outlook Settings” option at the bottom right-hand side
  1. Click on “General” From the Settings page
  2. Choose “Distribution groups” to reveal existing distribution groups
Distribution groups
  1. Click the “ Edit” icon under distribution groups I own
  1. Choose the “General tab” from the left-hand side
  1. Check the box written “Hide this group from shared address book” so that it will no longer appear in the Outlook Address book
  2. Click on the “Save” button

Create a MailTip

MailTips are a brilliant way to inform users while they are composing a message. As the user is typing a message, Exchange analyzes recipients and the user gets notified with a MailTip in case a problem is detected.

Here is how you can create a MailTip for your Outlook 365 distribution list:

  1. Login to OWA
  2. Click on the “Settings gear”
  1. Select the “View all Outlook Settings” option at the bottom right-hand side.
  1. Cick on “General” on the settings page
  2. Choose “Distribution groups” to reveal existing distribution groups
  3. Click on the “Edit pen” icon under “Distribution groups I own”
Distribution groups
  1. Select “MailTip” section, the last option on the list
  1. “Create a MailTip” in the text box to be displayed when people send emails to the group.
  2. Click “ok” and “save“
manage distribution list from outlook

Final thoughts

Now that you know how to create, edit & manage distribution lists in Outlook office 365 this is just one way to get your inbox organized. There are many more cool tips and methods you can use to get your inbox organized or even aim for inbox zero. Here are more awesome methods to sort and organize your Outlook. Oh And don’t forget to add an outlook signature to your emails 🙂

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