T1114 Email Collection

This diagnostic statement protects against Email Collection through the use of privileged account management and the use of multi-factor authentication.

This diagnostic statement provides protection from adversaries that try to gain sensitive information and data from users via email. Utilizing methods such as MFA is recommended to minimize the risk of adversaries collecting usernames and passwords.

This diagnostic statement is associated with employing encryption methods to mitigate unauthorized access or theft of data that protect the confidentiality and integrity of data-at-rest, data-in-use, and data-in-transit. To address threats to email collection, the use of encryption provides an added layer of security to sensitive information sent over email. Encryption using public key cryptography requires the adversary to obtain the private certificate along with an encryption key to decrypt messages.

This diagnostic statement protects against Email Collection through the use of revocation of keys and key management. Employing key protection strategies such as ensuring proper encryption methods and key management for those used in email along with policies for sending cryptographic material over email, limitations to specific accounts along with access control mechanisms provides protection against adversaries attempting to glean credentials from emails.

This diagnostic statement protects credential data and sensitive PII from being stolen from adversaries found in emails. here may be some similarities to NIST 800-53 SI-12 Information Management and Retention. This may provide mitigation of data access/exfiltration techniques.

This diagnostic statement describes how the organization implement appropriate authentication requirements, including selecting mechanisms based on risk, utilizing multi-factor authentication where necessary, and safeguarding the storage of authenticators like pins and passwords to protect sensitive access credentials.

This diagnostic statement protects credential data and sensitive PII from being stolen from adversaries found in emails. here may be some similarities to NIST 800-53 SI-12 Information Management and Retention. This may provide mitigation of data access/exfiltration techniques.

This diagnostic statement protects against Email Collection through the use of hardened access control policies, secure defaults, password complexity requirements, multifactor authentication requirements, and removal of terminated accounts.

This diagnostic statement is associated with employing strong encryption methods to mitigate unauthorized access or theft of data that protect the confidentiality and integrity of data-at-rest, data-in-use, and data-in-transit. To address threats to email collection, the use of encryption provides an added layer of security to sensitive information sent over email. Encryption using public key cryptography requires the adversary to obtain the private certificate along with an encryption key to decrypt messages.

This control provides minimal coverage for all of this technique's sub-techniques, resulting in an overall score of Minimal.

Advanced Protection Program enables the use of a security key for multi-factor authentication. Enabling MFA reduces the usefulness of usernames and passwords that may be collected via email since adversaries won't have the associated security keys to gain access.

Entra ID's continuous access evaluation is a security control implemented by enabling services to subscribe to critical Microsoft Entra events. Those events can then be evaluated and enforced near real time. This process enables tenant users lose access to organizational SharePoint Online files, email, calendar, or tasks, and Teams from Microsoft 365 client apps within minutes after a critical event is detected. The following events are currently evaluated: User Account is deleted or disabled Password for a user is changed or reset Multifactor authentication is enabled for the user Administrator explicitly revokes all refresh tokens for a user High user risk detected by Microsoft Entra ID Protection License Requirements: Continuous access evaluation will be included in all versions of Microsoft 365.

Microsoft Purview auditing solutions provide an integrated solution to help organizations effectively respond to security events, forensic investigations, internal investigations, and compliance obligations. Thousands of user and admin operations performed in dozens of Microsoft 365 services and solutions are captured, recorded, and retained in your organization's unified audit log. Audit records for these events are searchable by security ops, IT admins, insider risk teams, and compliance and legal investigators in your organization. This capability provides visibility into the activities performed across your Microsoft 365 organization. Microsoft's Audit Solutions protects from Email Collection attacks due to in an Exchange environment, Administrators can use Get-InboxRule to discover and remove potentially malicious auto-forwarding rules. License Requirements: Microsoft 365 E3 and E5

Microsoft Secure Score is a measurement of an organization's security posture, with a higher number indicating more recommended actions taken. It can be found at Microsoft Secure Score in the Microsoft Defender portal. Following the Secure Score recommendations can protect your organization from threats. From a centralized dashboard in the Microsoft Defender portal, organizations can monitor and work on the security of their Microsoft 365 identities, apps, and devices. Your score is updated in real time to reflect the information presented in the visualizations and recommended action pages. Secure Score also syncs daily to receive system data about your achieved points for each action. To help you find the information you need more quickly, Microsoft recommended actions are organized into groups: Identity (Microsoft Entra accounts & roles) Device (Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, known as Microsoft Secure Score for Devices) Apps (email and cloud apps, including Office 365 and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps) Data (through Microsoft Information Protection)

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 includes powerful automated investigation and response (AIR) capabilities that can save your security operations team time and effort. As alerts are triggered, it's up to your security operations team to review, prioritize, and respond to those alerts. Keeping up with the volume of incoming alerts can be overwhelming. Automating some of those tasks can help. AIR enables your security operations team to operate more efficiently and effectively. AIR capabilities include automated investigation processes in response to well-known threats that exist today. Appropriate remediation actions await approval, enabling your security operations team to respond effectively to detected threats. With AIR, your security operations team can focus on higher-priority tasks without losing sight of important alerts that are triggered. Examples include: Soft delete email messages or clusters, Block URL (time-of-click), Turn off external mail forwarding, Turn off delegation, etc. Required licenses E5 or Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 licenses.

Advanced hunting is a query-based threat hunting tool that lets you explore up to 30 days of raw data. Advanced hunting in Microsoft Defender XDR allows you to proactively hunt for threats across: Devices managed by Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Emails processed by Microsoft 365, Cloud app activities, authentication events, and domain controller activities. With this level of visibility, you can quickly hunt for threats that traverse sections of your network, including sophisticated intrusions that arrive on email or the web, elevate local privileges, acquire privileged domain credentials, and move laterally to across your devices. Advanced hunting supports two modes, guided and advanced. Users use advanced mode if they are comfortable using Kusto Query Language (KQL) to create queries from scratch. Advanced Threat Hunting Detects Email Collection attacks due to the IdentityLogonEvents table in the advanced hunting schema which contains information about all authentication activities related to Microsoft online services captured by Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps which monitors for unusual login activity from unknown or abnormal locations, especially for privileged accounts. License Requirements: Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Microsoft Defender for Office 365 plan 2

In Exchange Online Protection (EOP) organizations without Exchange Online mailboxes can use Exchange Mail Flow Rules (also known as transport rules) to look for specific conditions on messages that pass through your organization and take action on them. Mail Flow Rules take action on messages while they are in transit, not after the message is delivered to the mailbox. Mail flow rules contain a richer set of conditions, exceptions, and actions, which provides you with the flexibility to implement many types of messaging policies. Mail Flow Rules protects from Email Collection attacks due to the custom rules feature which allows you to define rules to encrypt email messages which provides an added layer of security to sensitive information sent over email. License Requirements: Microsoft Exchange Online Protection, Defender for Office 365 plan 1 and plan 2, Microsoft XDR