Protect Shared mailbox by Defender for O365

Peter 280 Reputation points
2023-04-13T12:01:50.5533333+00:00

Hi
We would like to protect lets say 100 shared mailboxes by Defender for Office 365. So we are going to buy 100 Defender for O365 licenses. Because shared mailboxes don't need Exchange Online licenses, it's not possible to assign the Defender licenses to the shared mailboxes.
First question:
From a technical perspective, are shared mailboxes protected by Defender for O365, even if they haven't assigned a Defender license?
Second Question:
From a license perspective, is it ok to just have Defender for O365 licenses for the shared mailboxes?
Regards
Peter

Exchange Online
Exchange Online
A Microsoft email and calendaring hosted service.
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Microsoft 365 and Office | Install, redeem, activate | For business | Windows
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  1. Yuki Sun-MSFT 41,376 Reputation points Moderator
    2023-04-17T08:12:15.81+00:00

    Hi @Peter ,

    First question:
    From a technical perspective, are shared mailboxes protected by Defender for O365, even if they haven't assigned a Defender license?

    From the context in the Licensing terms section of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 service description, yes, they are.
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    Second Question:
    From a license perspective, is it ok to just have Defender for O365 licenses for the shared mailboxes?

    Yes. It's ok to just have the Defender for O365 licenses for shared mailboxes if you don't need to use the shared mailbox in any way that needs an Exchange Online license. (See this link for scenarios that require an Exchange Online license for shared mailbox.


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