Enhanced Phishing Protection in Microsoft Defender SmartScreen - Windows Security (2023)

Starting in Windows 11, version 22H2, Enhanced Phishing Protection in Microsoft Defender SmartScreen helps protect Microsoft school or work passwords against phishing and unsafe usage on sites and apps.

If a user signs into Windows using a password, Enhanced Phishing Protection works alongside Windows security protections, and helps protect typed work or school password used to sign into Windows 11 in these ways:

• If users type their work or school password on any Chromium browser, into a site deemed malicious by Microsoft Defender SmartScreen, Enhanced Phishing Protection alerts them. It also prompts them to change their password so attackers can't gain access to their account.
• Reusing work or school passwords makes it easy for attackers who compromise a user's password to gain access to their other accounts. Enhanced Phishing Protection can warn users if they reuse their work or school Microsoft account password on sites and apps and prompt them to change their password.
• Since it's unsafe to store plaintext passwords in text editors, Enhanced Phishing Protection can warn users if they store their work or school password in Notepad, Word, or any Microsoft 365 Office app, and recommends they delete their password from the file.

Benefits of Enhanced Phishing Protection in Microsoft Defender SmartScreen

Enhanced Phishing Protection provides robust phishing protections for work or school passwords that are used to sign into Windows 11. The benefits of Enhanced Phishing Protection are:

• Anti-phishing support: Phishing attacks trick users through convincing imitations of safe content or through credential harvesting content hosted inside trusted sites and applications. Enhanced Phishing Protection helps protect users from reported phishing sites by evaluating the URLs a site or app is connecting to, along with other characteristics, to determine if they're known to distribute or host unsafe content.

• Secure operating system integration: Enhanced Phishing Protection is integrated directly into the Windows 11 operating system, so it can understand users' password entry context (including process connections, URLs, certificate information) in any browser or app. Because Enhanced Phishing Protection has unparalleled insight into what is happening at the OS level, it can identify when users type their work or school password unsafely. If users do use their work or school password unsafely, the feature empowers users to change their password to minimize chances of their compromised credential being weaponized against them.

• Unparalleled telemetry shared throughout Microsoft's security suite: Enhanced Phishing Protection is constantly learning from phishing attacks seen throughout the entire Microsoft security stack. It works alongside other Microsoft security products, to provide a layered approach to password security, especially for organizations early in their password-less authentication journey. If your organization uses Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, you can see valuable phishing sensors data in the Microsoft 365 Defender Portal. This portal lets you view Enhanced Phishing Protection alerts and reports for unsafe password usage in your environment.

• Easy management through Group Policy and Microsoft Intune: Enhanced Phishing Protection works with Group Policy and mobile device management (MDM) settings to help you manage your organization's computer settings. Based on how you set up Enhanced Phishing Protection, you can customize which phishing protection scenarios show users warning dialogs. For example, the Service Enabled setting determines whether the Enhanced Phishing Protection service is on or off. The feature is in audit mode if the other settings, which correspond to notification policies, aren't enabled.

  (Video) Windows 11 22H2 can now protect your passwords with Enhanced Phishing protection | How to enable

Windows edition and licensing requirements

The following table lists the Windows editions that support Enhanced phishing protection with SmartScreen:

Enhanced phishing protection with SmartScreen license entitlements are granted by the following licenses:

For more information about Windows licensing, see Windows licensing overview.

Configure Enhanced Phishing Protection for your organization

Enhanced Phishing Protection can be configured via Microsoft Intune, Group Policy Objects (GPO) or Configuration Service Providers (CSP) with an MDM service. Follow these instructions to configure your devices using either Microsoft Intune, GPO or CSP.

Recommended settings for your organization

By default, Enhanced Phishing Protection is deployed in audit mode, preventing notifications to the users for any protection scenarios. In audit mode, Enhanced Phishing Protection captures unsafe password entry events and sends diagnostic data through Microsoft Defender. Users aren't warned if they enter their work or school password into a phishing site, if they reuse their password, or if they unsafely store their password in applications. Because of this possibility, it's recommended that you configure Enhanced Phishing Protection to warn users during all protection scenarios.

To better help you protect your organization, we recommend turning on and using these specific Microsoft Defender SmartScreen settings.

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