AegisAI Perspectives · 098
This page shows how automated quarantine and remediation pulls a bad email from every mailbox, where it waits for approval, and how to test it in a trial.
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Automated quarantine and remediation judges a message after delivery, then moves or deletes every copy from the mailboxes it reached; in Microsoft 365, zero-hour auto purge covers the last 48 hours of delivered mail9. AegisAI pulls one bad email from every inbox it reached, forwards included18. In Microsoft 365, automated investigation actions wait for SecOps approval by default4.
Keep these three checks open while you read the steps below.
A verdict on a delivered message starts a search for every copy, then an action on each one. In Microsoft 365, remediation is done either by the system through zero-hour auto purge (ZAP), or by security teams through actions such as move to junk, soft delete or hard delete1. ZAP acts on messages already in a mailbox, but only within the last 48 hours of delivered email.
For high confidence phishing found after delivery, ZAP quarantines the message, and recipients can only request its release11. Messages older than 48 hours need a security team action instead. Find out which path your tenant uses for mail older than 48 hours.
Short on time? Watch the explainer, or book a demo.
By default, remediation actions identified by automated investigation and response (AIR) require approval by security operations teams4.
For malicious URL and file clusters, AIR approves its own pending actions without manual intervention16. Clusters larger than 10,000 messages do not remediate automatically and wait as Pending action for review5. Soft delete is currently the only action available for automated remediation. Check your AIR approval settings and note which message types still wait for a person.
The maximum number of active, concurrent email remediations is 50, and no new ones start until some finish2. Microsoft advises running remediation in batches of 50,000 messages or fewer.
For a phishing email that ZAP already removed, the AIR remediation is a soft delete of the email or its cluster7. Plan for a campaign larger than one batch before it arrives, and write the batch order into your runbook.
ZAP does not tell users when it moves a message10, and restoring a message depends on its verdict. Recipients cannot release messages quarantined as malware or high confidence phishing; they can only request release14.
Admins can report false positives to Microsoft from quarantine, and users can too, depending on the Reporting from quarantine setting13. Quarantine keeps anti-spam detections for 15 days by default, or 30 days under the Standard and Strict preset policies. The guide to stopping real invoices from being quarantined covers the false positive side in detail. Decide who answers release requests, and how fast, before you turn on any automatic removal.
Run these steps on a test group, and time each one.
Send a harmless test message to several mailboxes, and forward one copy to a colleague.
Mark it malicious, and record the time of the verdict.
Check that every copy, forwards included, was moved or deleted, and record the action used, such as soft delete or move to junk.
Check whether the action waited for approval, the AIR default.
Repeat with a message delivered more than 48 hours earlier, outside the ZAP search window.
Ask a test user what they saw, since ZAP does not notify users.
Release one false positive and time it from request to inbox.
Review false positive rates every week during the first month17.
Put these eight steps in the trial plan, so every tool is scored on the same test.
AegisAI pulls one bad email from every inbox it reached, forwards included. The median verdict takes 1.9 seconds, and a convicted message is removed from every mailbox it reached within seconds19. Every verdict comes with its reason in plain language, so your team can check it and share it. With graymail and spam control, quarantine holds only threats.
The middle column is what Microsoft 365 does natively, so you can see where an added layer helps and where it does not.
| Criterion | Question for the trial | Microsoft 365 native (ZAP and AIR) | AegisAI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reach | Is every copy removed, forwards included? | ZAP acts on messages already in mailboxes | One bad email pulled from every inbox it reached, forwards included |
| Time window | How far back does removal search? | ZAP searches the last 48 hours of delivered mail | Not stated on the product page; ask in the trial |
| Approval | Does removal wait for a person? | AIR actions need SecOps approval by default | Removed from every mailbox within seconds of the verdict; ask whether any approval step exists |
| Large campaigns | What happens over 10,000 messages? | Clusters over 10,000 wait as Pending action | Not stated on the product page; ask in the trial |
| Notice and reason | Is anyone told why a message was pulled? | Users are not notified when ZAP moves a message | Every verdict comes with its reason in plain language |
| Recoverability | Can a wrongly removed message come back? | Soft delete is the only automated action | No edge: ask how a removed message is restored |
60-second self-check
Six questions. Nothing is sent anywhere; the result shows on this page.
Score each row for every tool you test, and use the demo request page to arrange a removal test on your own tenant.
Illustrative example, figures are fictional. A 1,200 mailbox Microsoft 365 tenant receives a payment fraud campaign with no link and no file at 08:02, and 310 copies land. At 08:40 a user reports one. Because the cluster has no URL or file, the AIR action waits for approval, which an analyst gives at 09:25. Soft delete removes 296 copies. The other 14 were forwarded to a shared mailbox the search missed. Two users had already replied. The team records three figures: 83 minutes from delivery to removal, 14 copies missed, 2 replies sent.
Write your own incidents up in this format, with times and counts, and compare them across the trial.
Track three numbers from day one, each with the place it lives.
Review all three on day 30, and drop any setup where the first number depends on someone being awake.
A verdict on a delivered message starts a search for every copy, then a move or delete in each mailbox. In Microsoft 365, ZAP does this for the last 48 hours of delivered mail, and AIR proposes actions that need approval by default.
Partly. AIR actions need SecOps approval by default, AIR approves its own actions for malicious URL and file clusters, and clusters over 10,000 messages wait for review.
Not by ZAP. Users are not notified when ZAP detects and moves a message. If you want users told, set that up as a separate step in your process.
No. Recipients cannot release messages quarantined as malware or high confidence phishing; they can only request release. Admins, and users where the setting allows, can report false positives to Microsoft from quarantine.
Anti-spam detections stay 15 days by default, or 30 days under the Standard and Strict preset policies. Export anything you need for a review before then.
