Enterprises today have more information flying around than nearly any other type of organization at any other time in modern history. Advanced technologies help proliferate a frenetic rate of data creation, transfer, storage, and management, yet also provide cybercriminals with sophisticated tools to compromise that data later on. As information whizzes back and forth, the humble email service is often caught in the fray – or, in this case, right in the middle.
Companies can accept the risk and be sitting ducks (after all, it's not a matter of if but when, right?) or they can polish up on the latest email protection strategies for securing modern enterprises. That requires being able to identify the tactics being used, especially as advanced technologies like AI start to make their move. They need to know what's at stake and why attackers go after email like they do. And most importantly, they need to recognize how to leverage today's cybersecurity solutions to mitigate the evolving attacks that are getting better and better at hacking corporate email.
Protecting Email IS Protecting Business
To understand how email protection is vital for business protection, we first need to see what's at stake. When an attacker sets out to hack into a corporate email account, what are they really after? The answer could be anything.
The movement of information makes the business world go 'round, and email holds its spot as one of the most ubiquitous ways in which professionals move and send information. It's no wonder threat actors want to abscond with business resources and use their foothold to gain access to other areas of the organization. Forbes' 2023 State of the Workplace report noted that email remains the top communication tool among employees, with a quarter of remote workers listing it as their preferred means of communication. And among enterprise communications professionals, email is the "go-to channel" for business communication for 74%, according to a recent Ragan report. Sent via business email are:
- Sensitive HR documents;
- Links to access private company resources and services;
- Internal memos and proprietary resources;
- Intellectual property;
- And more.
What's more, they often present the "keys to the kingdom" as many employees store sensitive information in attached cloud-based repositories, such as Outlook's OneDrive or Gmail's Google Docs, Drive, and Sheets. These are examples of how email leaks have the potential to undermine an entire organization, which is why protecting email accounts, domains, and servers should be one of the top business objectives. To see the true impact of email leaks on business, one merely needs to look at these alarming recent statistics:
- According to IBM’s 2024 data, the average cost of a data breach is now $4.88 million.
- Per Verizon’s DBIR report summary, data breaches largely occur via the proliferation of malware and in 2023, over one-third of all malware was delivered via email.
- According to the FBI IC3 2023 report, compromised email accounts accounted for OVER $2.9 billion in losses (that’s in BEC scams ALONE!)
Watch Out for These Email Threats
Corporate email accounts get hacked in a number of ways, from phishing to account spoofing to Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams, and more. Here is an overview of some of the top threats:
- AI-Based Phishing: It's no secret that AI has been changing the game when it comes to the ways in which cybercriminals phish. Deep fakes are now more convincing than ever (copying facial mannerisms and voices with pinpoint accuracy), and word-perfect emails can be crafted in any language, opening up many "markets" to the woes and tribulations of phishing emails.
- Email Spoofing: One way for threat actors to sink your company is to tank your brand. Email spoofing is a way they can do that by hijacking your legitimate email domain to send illegitimate emails. Consequently, your site is the one that will get flagged, and your reputation will be at risk – not theirs. This is where DMARC email authentication tools can help prevent this from happening.
- BEC Scams: Business email compromise scams are some of the most lucrative scams on the market–whether email-based or otherwise. BEC scams are when attackers dupe employees into sending money to fraudulent accounts, ostensibly under the pretense of sending it to a business associate or client, and frequently by posing as the employee's boss or supervisor (hence the name!)ta across millions of user inboxes and develops countermeasures for novel attack patterns.
- Quishing (or QR Code Phishing): QR code phishing or quishing as it is often called, is on the rise; in the past ten years, instances have risen from 0.8% in 2021 to 10.8% in 2024 per accounting firm, Linkenheimer LLP. This technique is when attackers entice victims to inadvertently download malware or enter a spoofed site by scanning a QR code (instead of clicking a link or opening an attachment). Largely because scanning QR codes has become so attractive and rewarding in our consumerist society, many employees fall for these scams. Here is where Security Awareness Training (SAT) tools and courses can help users be aware that danger lurks here too, and to train them not to impulsively scan everything they see.
- Vishing (or Voicemall Phishing): With voicemail phishing or vishing as it is often called, plain text emails sent by a cybercriminal can sail right through a secure email gateway (SEG) and land in an employee inbox. They might contain what looks like a partial transcript, hyperlink, or attachment, or in Office 365 environments, they may show up with an EML file attachment. With a click of this "lure", Outlook displays a preview. Since it's not a full window, users often click on a link to explore deeper. When clicked, the user is directed to a page that looks like a Microsoft account login page and is prompted to authenticate with their user ID and password to "hear" the message. The initial login often fails on the first try, driving the recipient with a sense of urgency to reenter their credentials, which typically gains them access to an innocuous message that seems all but irrelevant.
Email Protection with Cloud Email Solutions and Beyond
Now, imagine all of these threats magnified by the exponential reach of the cloud. Today, eterprise email security tools need to extend beyond on-premise defenses. Fortra’s Cloud Email Protection can secure various email environments against advanced, cloud-based threats using a mixture of:
AI-Powered Data Science
Social engineering and impersonation attacks are quickly ferreted out of inboxes using a combination of machine learning (ML) models, Large Language Models (LLMs), and neural networks.
Automated Threat Remediation
Inbox threats are automatically expunged through Continuous Detection and Response (CDR), which utilizes Fortra's Advanced Data Science, Email Threat Operations, the implementation of customer-specific policies, and more.
Global Inbox Threat Intelligence
Threats that bypass traditional email gateways are caught here by identifying indicators of compromise (IOCs) using hundreds of curated, high-fidelity threat indicator feeds.
Email Threat Operations
This team of analysts investigates deep into threats using global threat feeds, data science models, current events, customer performance insights, and advanced methods like threat pivoting.
API-Based Integration
Protect against phishing attacks by using this API integration to quickly deploy within Google Workspace, Microsoft Exchange, and Office 365 environments, whether in the cloud, on-premises, or in a hybrid deployment.
If you’re worried about email spoofing specifically, Fortra’s Agari DMARC Protection provides organizations with the ability to prove senders are who they "say they are" when sending emails by issuing a trust score for each. By providing authentication and validation for company-sent emails, Agari helps companies keep their reputation safe and lets their clients know that the emails they receive from the organizations are legitimate, safe, and secure (i.e., not spoofed versions from an attacker).
It does so after DMARC policies are set up and implemented through continuous monitoring and reporting, with guidance on how to read the RUF and RUA reports that are sent back. Without knowing how to interpret these reports, it is impossible to make the necessary adjustments for keeping spoofed emails and impersonated domains out while preserving those communications that are legitimate and essential to your business.
There are myriad ways in which an email breach could disrupt business, and even more, thanks to the advent of AI and the increasing ubiquity of the cloud. The answer is to stay up to date with the latest defense mechanisms and technologies and keep outpacing attackers with enterprise-grade, scalable email protection solutions designed with the latest threats in mind.
