Updated April 14, 2022: Customers that have “Use Safe Links in Office 365 Apps” turned on, will need to create a custom policy in order to maintain safe links protections in Office 365 Apps. This change was planned to be deployed in conjunction with the completion of the Built-In Protection. However, the two changes will reach customers at differing times. Beginning mid-April tenants will see the policy setting Use Safe Links in Office 365 Apps in both the Global Settings menu and Custom Policy. As a reminder in the future tenants will not be able to manage this setting in the Global Settings menu.
Only the policy setting “Use Safe Links in Office 365 Apps” configured in the Global Setting menu will be enforced at this time. Another update will be sent prior to removing the policy setting from the Global Setting menu.
To create a more consistent user experience across all policies in Microsoft Defender for Office portal the following Safe Links policy attributes will be migrated from the Global Settings flyout to the custom policy settings.
Note: Use Safe Links in Office 365 Apps
- Do Not Track when users click protected links in Office 365 Apps
- Do not let users click through the Original URL in Office 365 Apps
Affected Workloads
- Exchange Online
- Microsoft 365 Defender
When this will happen
We will begin rolling this out in early May and expect to complete rollout late June.
How this will affect your organization
For already existing user scoped properties (Track Clicks and Allow Click Through), this change will not override user scoped settings with current tenant wide settings. This means these values will not change for any existing custom policies.
For customers that have “Use Safe Links in Office 365 Apps” turned on, after the migration this tenant level setting will be enabled by default as part of built-in protection for all users, groups, or domains not named as part of a custom policy. Customers can manage the properties “EnableSafeLinksforOffice”, “Track Clicks”, and “Allow Click Through” in custom policies going forward.
What you need to do to prepare
You might want to notify your users about this change and update your training and documentation as appropriate.
Learn more
- Preset security policies in EOP and Microsoft Defender for Office 365
- Safe Links in Microsoft Defender for Office 365
Message ID: MC342072
Published: 12 March 2022
Updated: 14 April 2022
