Email Security Features
IT Security will introduce improvements to the College’s email security strategy beginning on Monday, November 25, at 12:00 p.m. Email security provides email threat protection, spam filtering, and email quarantine options to all Montgomery College employees.
The changes outlined will simplify your management of quarantined email, provide new features to manage your inbox, and provide additional insights and feedback to your reports of suspected phishing emails.
Job Aids
Managing Quarantined Email (PDF, 
)
Outlook Promotions Folder (PDF, )
Reporting Phishing in Outlook (PDF, )
Email Quarantine: Junk Mail Folder
Quarantined emails/spam messages will be delivered directly to the existing Junk folder
found in your Outlook email list, rather than having to review a daily digest or logging
into a separate system to manage your quarantined messages.
Mailbox Productivity Management: New “Promotions” Folder
A new folder titled, “Promotions” will appear in your Outlook email folder list. The Promotions folder will capture any incoming emails flagged as “Graymail”.
Graymail is email that is not considered spam because it is solicited and from a legitimate source, but it may not be critical to your daily workflow. Examples of graymail include newsletters or targeted advertisements.
The Promotions folder will be populated with your Graymail for you to address at your convenience. Review this mailbox periodically and move emails to your inbox that you prefer to see in your normal mail flow. Performing this action will teach the system to direct future emails from selected senders to go directly to your Inbox.
The inverse of this action would be to move emails delivered to your Inbox, that you are not interested in seeing in your normal mail flow, to the Promotions folder. This will teach the system to direct these future emails to your Promotions folder.
Email Protection: Report Phishing
You will still use the Report Phishing button to report any suspicious emails to the
IT Security Team! However, instead of wondering if the message was really a malicious
message or not, you will now receive an automated reply email with the results of
the analysis of the message you reported. The sending email address for the automated
reply is: autoresponses@montgomerycollege.edu.
The analysis will sort the reported message into one of three categories:
- Safe – the message will be returned to you
- Spam – the message can be ignored, no further action required
- Malicious – the message is confirmed to be phishing, and has been removed from all inboxes
Note: This email attaches the original reported email to the auto response for the employee.
Hello John Smith,
Thank you for your vigilance in reporting suspicious messages. Your actions protect you and the entire Montgomery College community.
The IT Security team has reviewed your email report, "[Subject of reported Email]", submitted on XX/XX/2024. The email was analyzed as benign and no further action is required.
Thanks again for staying alert and reporting.
MC IT Security Team
Hello John Smith,
Thank you for your vigilance in reporting suspicious messages. Your actions protect you and the entire Montgomery College community.
The IT Security team has reviewed your email report, "[Subject of reported Email]", submitted on XX/XX/2024. The email was analyzed to be spam. No further action is required.
Thanks again for staying alert and reporting.
MC IT Security Team
Hello John Smith,
Thank you for your vigilance in reporting suspicious messages. Your actions protect you and the entire Montgomery College community.
The security team has reviewed your recent email report, "[Subject of reported Email]", submitted on XX/XX/2024. The email was analyzed to be malicious and removed from your Inbox.
Thanks again for staying alert and reporting.
MC IT Security Team