PhishAlarm made its public debut in Cornell Outlook email clients in March 2024, making it easier to report suspicious messages to the IT Security Office and remove these messages from the email client. 

In the past year, PhishAlarm has notified the IT Security Office about more than 16,000 suspicious messages, including those in the training program used to educate community members on how to detect phishing messages. The IT Security Office also uses PhishAlarm notifications as part of its discovery process in tracking cybersecurity threats.

Microsoft includes a generic reporting tool associated with an open shield icon in the Outlook client, but this icon does not notify Cornell’s IT Security Office and is not sufficient for either training or tracking purposes.

The PhishAlarm icon looks like a white envelope caught on a blue fish hook and is often found in the upper right corner of individual email messages or on the right side of the ribbon toolbar at the top of the Outlook client.

As Microsoft’s Outlook software evolves, the location of the PhishAlarm icon may shift into the Apps list located behind a small waffle or three dots arranged horizontally or vertically. For Outlook on the Web customers, resizing the browser window may prompt the application to re-render the PhishAlarm icon in the top ribbon toolbar.

For more details about finding and using PhishAlarm, see our web page.