CISA.MS.EXO.11.3: The phishing protection solution SHOULD include an AI-based phishing detection tool comparable to EOP Mailbox Intelligence.
| ID | CISA.MS.EXO.11.3 |
| Severity | Medium |
| Suite | CISA SCuBA baselines |
| Product | Exchange Online |
| Related products | Defender |
| Feature | Anti-phishing |
| Security area | Email and collaboration protection |
| Resource type | Tenant |
| User impact of fixing | Low |
| Effort to fix | Low |
| Benchmark | CISA SCuBA Secure Configuration Baselines for Microsoft 365 ScubaGear main, 2026-10-11, MS.EXO.11.3 (SHOULD) |
| Framework controls | cisa-scuba:MS.EXO.11.3 |
| MITRE ATT&CK | T1566 |
| Reads from | Exchange Online, Microsoft Graph, Security & Compliance PowerShell |
| Licence needed | ATP_ENTERPRISE |
What this checks and how to fix it
Section titled “What this checks and how to fix it”The phishing protection solution SHOULD include an AI-based phishing detection tool comparable to EOP Mailbox Intelligence.
Rationale: Phishing attacks can result in unauthorized data disclosure and unauthorized access. Using AI-based phishing detection tools to improve the detection rate of phishing attempts helps reduce the risk of successful phishing attacks.
Remediation action
Section titled “Remediation action”- Sign in to Microsoft 365 Defender.
- In the left-hand menu, go to Email & Collaboration > Policies & Rules.
- Select Threat Policies.
- From the Templated policies section, select Preset Security Policies.
- Under Standard protection, slide the toggle switch to the right so the text next to the toggle reads Standard protection is on.
- Under Strict protection, slide the toggle switch to the right so the text next to the toggle reads Strict protection is on.
Note: If the toggle slider in step 5 is grayed out, click on Manage protection settings instead and configure the policy settings according to Use the Microsoft 365 Defender portal to assign Standard and Strict preset security policies to users | Microsoft Learn.
Related links
Section titled “Related links”- Defender admin center - Preset security policies
- CISA 11 Phishing Protections - MS.EXO.11.3v1
- CISA ScubaGear Rego Reference
- Microsoft Learn - Mailbox intelligence impersonation protection
Mito check, based on CISA ScubaGear. Author: soulemike. Open-source licences.
Open-source licences. CIS Benchmark material © Center for Internet Security, Inc.; CISA SCuBA baselines are public domain (CC0).
© 2026 Virtual Petals. Mito is a Virtual Petals service, hosted in Microsoft Azure UAE North.