As the security agencies have seen an increase in attacks against on-premise Microsoft Exchange servers, recently Microsoft released a one-click mitigation tool to help the customers of both current and out-of-support versions of on-premise Exchange Servers who are unfamiliar with the patch/update process.
Now the company has taken an additional step to further support the customers who are still vulnerable and have not yet implemented the complete security updates. To tackle the critical vulnerabilities in Exchange Server, Microsoft implemented an automatic mitigation tool within Defender Antivirus.
The on-premise Microsoft Exchange Server customers who are still vulnerable and have not yet implemented the complete security update, Microsoft added an additional step to further support those customers and protect them from security vulnerabilities.
With the latest security intelligence update, the Microsoft Defender Antivirus and System Center Endpoint Protection will automatically mitigate any vulnerable Exchange Server. Customers won't have to take any additional action beyond ensuring that they have installed the latest security update (build 1.333.747.0 or higher).
Customers who have already installed the Microsoft Defender Antivirus and have already enabled the automatic definition updates do not have to take any further action to receive the mitigation. Microsoft Defender Antivirus will automatically identify if a vulnerable version of Exchange Server is installed and apply the mitigations the first time the security intelligence update is deployed.
If you don’t have Microsoft Defender Antivirus installed on your Exchange Server system, Microsoft suggests using the One-Click Microsoft Exchange On-Premises Mitigation Tool.