Email is the most used formal tool of communication within the organization and with the outer world. It is accessed on multiple devices at different places. It contains useful information and has proven to be one of the best tools for record-keeping. It stores all correspondence that takes place among employees and outsiders which proves to be a useful record in a company’s archives.
So, proper email security tools should be in place for protecting the company’s valuable information. These tools require a stable internet connection to ensure efficient operations. Having a competent customer service department such as Spectrum Internet customer service to quickly resolve any issue for Spectrum One deal that may arise is your cue to sign up with them.
Email Security
Emails have an open and accessible format to provide ease of communication. It is the primary source of communication among employees and organizations, therefore it carries valuable information regarding the company and its operations. Its openness, however, exposes it to various threats such as malware, phishing attacks, and data theft. Any person intercepting the email domain can easily read the content of the emails which can be used for malicious activities causing reputation and financial damage to the company.
Email protection softwares have been invented to combat these threats. Companies must ensure email protection through this advanced softwares to prevent any security breaches.
Types of Threats
Phishing
Phishing is the most common type of threat. It comes across as a trustable entity and scams the user into opening certain emails, links, or text messages and steals valuable information such as login details and credit card credentials. With an increase in awareness, it has now become easier to spot such attacks. Phishing attacks have also become more sophisticated over time. Attackers now use more persuasive and plausible ways of approaching.
The attacks can be generic or targeted towards certain individuals containing valuable information.
Malware
Malware can easily enter the system through loopholes in email security. Once this virus enters the system it can easily corrupt the system and steal important information.
Spam
The huge amount of emails mostly containing advertisements of goods and services are called spam. These email messages may contain certain malware software which can entice the customer into giving away personal information.
Data Breach
Emails contain sensitive and valuable information. Therefore, email credentials are the main target of attackers trying to intercept emails. They can cause significant damage and financial losses to a company by the information stolen from the emails.
Hacking the Email Server
Sometimes hackers make a more aggressive attempt to hack the company’s email server. They do so by repeated attempts and stuffing credentials. If the hackers can break into the email server, it gives them access to all emails and attachments of the organization which can be very harmful to the company.
Email Security Solutions
Secure Email Gateway (SEG)
SEG are commonly used and are deployed as virtual tools mostly on cloud-based servers. Advanced functions of SEG are as follows:
Spam quarantine – shifting suspicious messages to quarantine.
URL – checking if the URL origin in an email is safe.
Security Sandbox – test running suspicious files separately.
Antivirus – Scanning with multiple antivirus softwares.
Clawback – removal of a message after it has already been delivered.
Preventing Impersonation – Helping users identify impersonators.
Graymail management – Defining policies for managing large amounts of email.
SEG also performs certain outbound activities such as:
Push encryption – conversion of an email into an encrypted file and set it as an attachment.
Pull encryption – Retrieval of the encrypted email message.
Data in Transit – using Transport Layer Security to transcript data in transit.
DLP – Securing personal information through Data Loss Prevention.
Email Data Protection (EDP)
EDP is an important email security tool. Its distinct features are as follows:
Identifying recipients – making sure the recipients are not impersonators and real entities before they decode a message.
Block/Redirect/Encrypt Emails -EDP analysis the content and performs one of the three mentioned functions depending on the analysis.
Two-Factors Authentication – it uses two-factor authentication to tighten security and avoid credential theft.
Integrated Cloud Email Security (ICES)
ICES protects the emails in the following ways:
Integration with Cloud Email Protection Server – ICES when integrated with cloud email protection servers is capable of scanning emails for spam, blocking email messages from suspicious user’s ad web addresses, and scanning for viruses.
Inline notifications – ICES sends alerts to users regarding emails carrying suspicious content and helps identify malicious emails.
Scanning Internal Traffic – ICES scans internal email traffic for malicious content.
Advanced Detection Techniques – ICES spots malicious emails through advanced techniques such as Natural language Processing, Natural Language Understanding, and image recognition.
Baseline Behavior – ICES uses past emails to analyze user behavior and compare it to any communication that may sound different to detect account hacking.
End-to-end encryption – It uses end-to-end encryption to protect data.
Mailbox Triage – ICES Automatically redirects emails into set folders such as inbox, spam, etc. Read more
