Shield Onboarding Guide
Shield is an email security system using a zero trust model that filters unwanted messages, highlights email risk levels with a color-coded Heads-Up Display, provides detailed message insights via an X-ray inspector, and ensures only trusted emails reach your inbox while simplifying user decisions and enhancing overall email safety.
Your New Email Experience with Shield
Shield is designed to protect your email using a "zero trust" approach, similar to an exclusive social network where you control who can contact you. This ensures that unwanted communication is filtered out, and you have control over which emails reach your inbox.
What Changes with Shield
You’ll no longer need to:
- Guess whether an email is safe or dangerous
- Repeatedly tell your email system who you want to hear from
- Wonder if you’ve missed important emails or if your inbox is secure
Instead, you’ll:
- Recognize safe emails by their color-coded security banner
- See important emails arrive in your inbox without delay
- Receive only the emails that matter to you, with the rest filtered automatically
- Make one-time decisions that Shield remembers for the future
- Receive regular updates about your email security
Six Ways Shield Improves Your Email
1. Heads-Up Display (HUD)
Once Shield is active, every email includes a visual security summary at the top, called the Heads-Up Display (HUD). The HUD uses clear color signals to indicate risk levels:
- Yellow: Low risk (e.g., bulk email); delivered to junk if sender is unknown. May indicate the message is from an untrusted region.
- Orange: Moderate risk (e.g., spam); delivered to junk even if sender is known.
- Red: High risk (e.g., impersonation); typically held outside the mailbox and should be treated with caution. May indicate the message is from a known dangerous region.
- Green: Safe; from trusted contacts and delivered immediately to your inbox.
Shield also alerts you when someone new emails you for the first time, providing additional information to help you quickly identify safe or harmful messages from new contacts.
2. X-ray Email Inspector
Clicking on the HUD opens Shield’s email inspector, called X-ray. This safe preview environment provides detailed insights about a message, explaining risks and origins in everyday language. This helps you make informed decisions before interacting with the email.
Note: The first time you access the Shield portal, you’ll need to authenticate with your Microsoft login credentials (only required once).
Example Insights
- Bad Message: May appear to come from a trusted contact but contains high-risk factors indicating possible compromise. Exercise caution before replying or clicking links/attachments.
- Good Message: From a trusted contact in a trusted region, with an authentic signature. Safe to interact with.
3. New Senders & Personalization
When someone new emails you, Shield lets you decide whether to trust or silence them, similar to accepting or declining friend requests on social media. The new sender banner at the top of the message is clickable and opens the Shield app in your browser.
- Trust: Allow future emails from the sender.
- Silence: Block future emails from the sender.
You can also train Shield directly from your email client:
- Move a message from Junk to Inbox to trust the sender.
- Permanently delete from Junk to silence the sender.
4. Learns as You Use It
Shield learns from your actions—replying to messages, deleting unwanted emails, and trusting or silencing new senders. Over time, your inbox will contain only what’s important to you. Shield needs a little time to learn your preferences, especially during the first week.
5. Spotlight Email Search & Security Briefing
Spotlight provides powerful search to find any message, anywhere, quickly. You can preview emails in X-ray and move them as needed.
Daily Email Security Briefing keeps you informed about:
- New senders awaiting your review
- Stats on how Shield is protecting you
6. Keeping You Informed
You’ll receive daily updates to ensure you never miss anything important and to help you understand how Shield is working for you.
What to Expect in Your First Week
Think of Shield as a new personal assistant learning your preferences. Here’s what to expect:
First Day
- Familiarize yourself with the color-coded HUD banners at the top of your emails.
- In your inbox, you’ll see green banners from trusted contacts (inside your organization or people you’ve emailed before).
Training Shield
- Check your junk folder and take actions to train Shield:
- Drag wanted messages from Junk to Inbox.
- Delete unwanted messages from Junk.
- Respond to new sender banners to trust or silence senders.
Next Few Days
- Continue moving messages around your mailbox to help Shield learn your preferences.
- Use Spotlight search if you’re missing an email.
- Review your Daily Security Briefing for important updates.
By the End of the Week
- Spend less time sorting through unwanted emails as Shield learns your preferences.
- Feel more confident about email security, understanding the visual cues and insights provided.
- Enjoy a more productive email experience with less time spent managing emails.
The first week may feel different, but most users quickly appreciate the calm and control Shield brings to their inbox.
If you have questions or need assistance, support is available.
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Getting Started with Shield
Shield is an inbox assistant using a zero trust approach that filters emails by color-coded risk levels, lets users manage new senders through trust or silence options, learns preferences via drag-and-drop training, and safely previews risky messages in a protected space called X-ray to keep your inbox secure and organized.