Microsoft Will Throttle and Block Vulnerable Exchange Servers in Exchange Online

According to a new announcement, Microsoft will block inbound connections from vulnerable on-premises Exchange Servers to Exchange Online.

The blocking is preceded by a period of throttling which will cause delays in your mail delivery. If the server is not upgraded/patched within 30 days, it will eventually be blocked.

Initially, only Exchange 2007 servers connecting via on-premises inbound connectors are in scope.

But Microsoft intends to extend the scope to cover (currently unsupported) Exchange 2010 and (soon unsupported) Exchange 2013.

Eventually, the scope is intended to include any version of Exchange that does not meet a secure patch level.

You have two options to handle this new requirement.

One way is to upgrade and continuously patch your on-premises Exchange Servers to meet the evolving threats that continue to target Exchange on-premises. However, this can be a very time-consuming and costly endeavor.

Alternatively, if you’re fully mail migrated to Exchange Online, you can remove your on-premises Exchange Server.

The main challenge related to the removal of Exchange on-premises is the management of on-premises mail attributes.

Even with mailboxes hosted in Office 365, you still have a lot of mail attributes that can only be managed from your on-premises Active Directory.

These attributes include email addresses (proxyAddresses), hide from global address lists, distribution group owners, and many more.

With Easy365Manager, you can manage your email attributes directly from user/group/contact properties.

On top of this, Easy365Manger will consolidate your Active Directory and Exchange Online management to provide you with the most efficient hybrid Office 365 management solution in the market.

Easy365Manager effectively eliminates the need to use multiple web consoles and PowerShell modules. Instead, all daily management is done directly from AD Users & Computers: