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Office 365 journaling setup

Last reviewed: almost 2 years ago

For customers using Microsoft Office 365, setting up Email Security via journaling is quick and easy. The following email flow shows how this works:

Email flow when setting up a phishing assessment risk for Office 365 with Email Security.

Journaling

1. Configure connector for delivery to Email Security (formerly Area 1) (if required)

If your email architecture does not include an outbound gateway, you can skip this step and proceed to the next one.

On the other hand, if your email architecture requires outbound messages to traverse your email gateway, you may want to consider configuring a connector to send the journal messages directly to Email Security.

  1. Log in to the Exchange admin center, and go to Mail flow > Connectors.

    Go to the connectors area

  2. Select Add a connector.

  3. Configure the new connector as follows:

    • Connection From: Office 365
    • Connection to: Partner Organization

    Configure the connector

  4. Select Next.

  5. Configure the connector as follows:

    • Name: Deliver journal directly to Area 1
    • Description: Deliver journal directly to Area 1
    • Turn it on: Enabled.

    Name the connector and give it a description

  6. Select Next.

  7. Configure the Use of connector setting as follows:

    • Select Only when email messages are sent to these domains.
    • In the text field, enter journaling.mxrecord.io as the host address, and select + to add the domain.

    Configure use of connector

  8. Select Next.

  9. Configure the Routing setting as follows:

    • Select Route email through these smart hosts.
    • In the text field, enter journaling.mxrecord.io as the smart host address, and select + to add the domain.

    Configure the routing setting

  10. Select Next.

  11. In Security restrictions, you need to keep the default TLS configuration. Review the following settings:

    • Make sure the Always use Transport Layer Security (TLS) to secure the connection (recommended) checkbox is selected.
    • In Connect only if the recipients email server certificate matches this criteria select Issued by a trusted certificate authority (CA).

    Configure security restrictions

  12. Select Next.

  13. You need to validate the connector by using your tenant’s specific journaling address. To find this address, go to the Email Security dashboard > Support > Service Addresses page.

    Validate the connector

  14. Add the address and select Validate.

  15. Once the validation completes, you should receive a Succeed status for all the tasks. Select Next.

    Validation success if all goes well

  16. Review the configuration and select Create connector.

    Review your connector

Your connector is now active. You can find it in Exchange admin center > Mail flow > Connectors.

Connector active

2. Configure journal rule

  1. Log in to the Microsoft Purview compliance portal.

  2. Go to Data lifecycle management > Exchange (legacy).

  3. Select Settings (the gear icon).

  4. In Send undeliverable journal reports to enter the email address of a valid user account. Note that you cannot use a team or group address.

    Configure undeliverable emails

  5. Select Save.

  6. Still in the Exchange (legacy) screen, select Journal Rules.

    Select journal rules

  7. Select New rule to configure a journaling rule, and configure it as follows:

    • Send journal reports to: This address is specific to each customer tenant, and can be found in your Email Security dashboard. For example, <customer_name>@journaling.mxrecord.io.
    • Journal Rule Name: Journal Messages to CloudflareArea 1
    • Journal messages sent or received from: Everyone
    • Type of message to journal: External messages only
  8. Select Next.

  9. Verify the information is correct, and select Submit > Done.

    Verify the journal rule information

Once saved, the rule is automatically active. However, it may take a few minutes for the configuration to propagate and start pushing messages to Cloudflare Email Security. After it propagates, you can access the Cloudflare Email Security dashboard to check the number of messages processed. This number will grow as journaled messages are sent to Cloudflare Email Security from your Exchange server.

3. Compliance

Create Office 365 distribution lists

For compliance purposes, you might be required to process emails in certain geographic regions such as India or the EU. If that is your case, you should create Office 365 distribution lists for each geographic region where you need to process your emails, before configuring your journal rule.

Configure journal rule

After creating the distribution lists based on regions for your users, configure your journal rule:

  1. Log in to the Microsoft Purview compliance portal.

  2. Go to Data lifecycle management > Exchange (legacy).

  3. Select Settings (the gear icon).

  4. In Send undeliverable journal reports to enter the email address of a valid user account. Note that you cannot use a team or group address.

    Configure undeliverable emails

  5. Select Save.

  6. Still in the Exchange (legacy) screen, select Journal Rules.

    Select journal rules

  7. Select New rule to configure a journaling rule, and configure it as follows:

    • Send journal reports to: This address is specific to each customer tenant, and can be found in your Email Security dashboard. If you need to process emails in certain geographic regions, refer to the Geographic locations table for more information on what address you should use.
    • Journal Rule Name: Journal Messages to CloudflareArea 1
    • Journal messages sent or received from: A specific user or group and select the user group you created above.
    • Type of message to journal: External messages only
  8. Select Next.

  9. Verify the information is correct, and select Submit > Done.

    Verify the journal rule information

Once saved, the rule is automatically active. However, it may take a few minutes for the configuration to propagate and start pushing messages to Cloudflare Email Security. After it propagates, you can access the Cloudflare Email Security dashboard to check the number of messages processed. This number will grow as journaled messages are sent to Cloudflare Email Security from your Exchange server.

Geographic locations

Select from the following BCC addresses to process email in the correct geographic location.

HostLocationNote
<customer_name>@journaling.mxrecord.ioUSBest option to ensure all email traffic processing happens US data centers.
<customer_name>@journaling.mailstream-eu-primary.mxrecord.ioEUBest option to ensure all email traffic processing happens in Germany, with backup to US data centers.
<customer_name>@journaling.mailstream-eu1.mxrecord.ioEUBest option to ensure all email traffic processing happens within the EU without backup to US data centers.
<customer_name>@journaling.mailstream-bom.mxrecord.mxIndiaBest option to ensure all email traffic processing happens within India.
<customer_name>@journaling.mailstream-india-primary.mxrecord.mxIndiaSame as mailstream-bom.mxrecord.mx, with backup to US data centers.
<customer_name>@journaling.mailstream-asia.mxrecord.mxIndiaBest option to ensure all email traffic processing happens in India, with Australia data centers as backup.
<customer_name>@journaling.mailstream-syd.area1.cloudflare.netAustralia / New ZealandBest option to ensure all email traffic processing happens within Australia.
<customer_name>@journaling.mailstream-australia.area1.cloudflare.netAustralia / New ZealandBest option to ensure all email traffic processing happens in Australia, with India and US data centers as backup.