Email Security & Anti-Phishing
What Is Email Security?
Email continues to be the most used channel for cyberattacks and a lucrative access point for sensitive data. The continuing reliance on email by organizations is why it’s important to have a robust solution for email security – one that is integrated and adaptive for a wide range of email-based threats.
Email security – an essential security need for any organization – comprises all the technology and policies that are designed to protect email content and communications against cyberattacks.
Whether your on-prem or in the cloud, email security should protect an email inbox from everyday hackers, malware, and phishing. It should protect a brand from imposters posing as trusted colleagues, vendors, and partners intent on defrauding the brand. Last but not certainly least, it should protect an organization’s data.
What Is Anti-Phishing?
Phishing is one of the most prevalent forms of social engineering attack used to steal sensitive personal information, or to gain a foothold inside a company’s network. In a phishing attempt, malicious messages are crafted with the goal of the recipient clicking on a link or email attachment that contains malware, or in the case of Business Email Compromise (BEC), a bad actor will impersonate someone within a company to deceive the recipient into believing they're interacting with a trusted sender.
In the ever-evolving age of sophisticated schemes and scams, a proactive anti-phishing posture is requisite when it comes to maintaining a secure email ecosystem. Anti-phishing solutions prevent potential threats from reaching employee inboxes by monitoring every message flowing into and within an organization to defend against highly targeted, identity deception-based attacks.
Threats to Email Security
Email remains a popular and convenient communication tool. For this reason, it’s also a popular access point for cyberattacks. There are many different threats to email security. Some of the most common include:
Email Security Best Practices
How to Secure Email Inboxes
To keep inbound and outbound emails protected from security threats including phishing and data loss, a robust policy must be determined. For email security best practices, follow these six simple steps:
1. Determine what needs protection
Compliance regulations dictate that sensitive data such as Personal Identifiable Information (PII), payment card details, or patient medical data is safeguarded from unauthorized disclosure. A solution that can detect and remove unauthorized sensitive data from incoming and outgoing emails, and automatically encrypt any authorized data, will protect employees and the organization if sensitive data is incorrectly sent or received.
Compliance regulations dictate that sensitive data such as Personal Identifiable Information (PII), payment card details, or patient medical data is safeguarded from unauthorized disclosure. A solution that can detect and remove unauthorized sensitive data from incoming and outgoing emails, and automatically encrypt any authorized data, will protect employees and the organization if sensitive data is incorrectly sent or received.
2. Identify cyber threats
The right email security solution needs to prevent malware, spyware, ransomware, BEC (phishing) emails, unwanted data acquisition, and unnecessary file types from reaching inboxes.
The right email security solution needs to prevent malware, spyware, ransomware, BEC (phishing) emails, unwanted data acquisition, and unnecessary file types from reaching inboxes.
3. Establish a robust and sustainable email security policy
An email security solution that’s easy to deploy, monitor, and manage will help support and enforce a policy in a way that doesn’t overburden the IT department, email administrators, or messaging teams. Features such as the ability to handle all threats from a single interface and have employees manage their own quarantine list will help increase the efficiency of the solution and ultimately free up time for IT teams to spend on other projects.
An email security solution that’s easy to deploy, monitor, and manage will help support and enforce a policy in a way that doesn’t overburden the IT department, email administrators, or messaging teams. Features such as the ability to handle all threats from a single interface and have employees manage their own quarantine list will help increase the efficiency of the solution and ultimately free up time for IT teams to spend on other projects.
Close the zero-hour window
Anti-malware solutions are great for defending against known dangers. But what happens if a brand-new virus tries to enter a network before security loopholes have been identified? Email security solutions that can filter and analyze the content of messages and attachments and sanitize these evasive threats will help close this vulnerability.
Anti-malware solutions are great for defending against known dangers. But what happens if a brand-new virus tries to enter a network before security loopholes have been identified? Email security solutions that can filter and analyze the content of messages and attachments and sanitize these evasive threats will help close this vulnerability.
5. Encrypt sensitive data
To aid compliance, email security solutions need a range of easy-to-use policy-based encryption options including TLS, PKI technologies such as S/MIME or PGP, Web-portal, or password protected messages.
To aid compliance, email security solutions need a range of easy-to-use policy-based encryption options including TLS, PKI technologies such as S/MIME or PGP, Web-portal, or password protected messages.
6. Monitor traffic behavior and performance
Visibility of emails and comprehensive reporting is important when determining and enforcing policy. Email security solutions that provide detailed audit trails help IT teams investigate potential breaches. Those that export data to SIEM systems allow organizations to get a 360-degree view of the data flowing in and out of the organization.
Visibility of emails and comprehensive reporting is important when determining and enforcing policy. Email security solutions that provide detailed audit trails help IT teams investigate potential breaches. Those that export data to SIEM systems allow organizations to get a 360-degree view of the data flowing in and out of the organization.
For more information about protection from advanced threats, review these resources.
Learn how to protect your organization from Advanced Persistent Threats
Read our guide to protecting your organization from advanced threats
Protecting Your Brand
Part of email security is protecting the organization’s brand. Implementing an email security solution that accelerates email authentication and enforcement can help accomplish this. DMARC Email Authentication automates phishing prevention and protects an organization’s customers, partners, and brand from outbound email sending abuse. It also automatically identifies, tracks, and manages senders - giving organizations one centralized place to discover, align, and authorize sender domains and IP addresses.
Email Security & Anti-Phishing Solutions from Fortra
Keep emails, brands, and data safe from sophisticated phishing attacks, insider threats, and accidental data loss with minimal business disruption. Learn how solutions from Fortra for Email Security and Anti-Phishing can protect your business better.
Domain Protection
A robust DMARC authentication & monitoring solution stops phishing by automating the process of DMARC email authentication and enforcement to protect customers from cyberattacks. In doing so, it can help preserve brand identity and improve digital engagement, even post-deployment.
Cloud Email Security
Fortra's Cloud Email Protection is an integrated cloud email security solution that combines data science, global inbox threat intelligence, and automated remediation into a single cloud-native platform – stopping threats that bypass traditional defenses.
Secure Gateways
A Secure Gateways are email security solutions that monitor emails coming into and out of an organization before they reach an email inbox to protect from malicious content including spam, viruses, phishing, and malware.
