In today’s digital landscape, cloud-based email platforms like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace have become the backbone of corporate communication. While these platforms offer the flexibility and efficiency that modern businesses need, they also present unique security challenges. Cybercriminals continuously adapt their methods to exploit cloud email vulnerabilities, which can lead to data breaches, compromised accounts, and costly disruptions.
Verizon's latest Data Breach Investigation Report (DBIR) states that the three primary ways in which attackers access an organization's data include phishing, stolen credentials, and exploitation of vulnerabilities. In addition, Business Email Compromise (BEC) and other social engineering attacks continue to dominate the threat landscape and chances are that current on-premise appliances, such as Secure Email Gateway, or off-the-shelf solutions like M365, struggle with the challenges posed by these sophisticated threats.
With the growing adoption of cloud services, traditional secure email gateways (SEGs) and built-in cloud security tools struggle to detect sophisticated attacks like Business Email Compromise (BEC). Because they don’t rely on obvious malicious links or attachments, they are particularly challenging to identify; instead, they use social engineering techniques to mimic legitimate emails. Attackers carefully craft spoofed messages that appear highly credible, often slipping past both recipients and existing email security solutions due to their realistic appearance. Let's explore the top threats to cloud email security and strategies organizations can implement to defend against them.
Top Threats to Cloud Email Security
How Can Fortra's Cloud Email Protection Help?
The launch of Fortra’s Cloud Email Protection encompasses an array of advanced features like AI/ML-driven detection, threat intelligence, and security awareness training and much more.
Cloud Email Protection delivers multi-faceted defense against advanced email threats in ONE single solution. The foundation of Cloud Email Protection encapsulates data science, global inbox threat intelligence, and automated remediation. This foundation makes Cloud Email Protection the only integrated cloud email security solution to stop threats that bypass traditional email security defenses by combining these features into a single cloud-native platform:
- Data Science: Through data science and AI, Cloud Email Protection applies machine learning models, large language models (LLMs), and neural networks to stop unknown threats.
- Global Inbox Threat Intelligence: By crowdsourcing malicious indicators from user inboxes worldwide, Cloud Email Protection can stop emerging threats.
- Email Threat Operations: Cloud Email Protection mines threat data across millions of user inboxes and develops countermeasures for novel attack patterns.
- Continuous Detection and Response: At enterprise-scale, Cloud Email Protection automatically finds and eradicates threats throughout the email environment.
- Security Awareness Training (add-on): Through fun, engaging, accessible content, Fortra's Terranova Security offering strengthens your organization's information security and builds key cyber threat resilience in your employees with powerful, easy-to-use security awareness training and phishing simulations.
Conclusion
The best approach is a layered one—combining AI-powered detection, strict access controls, employee training, and continuous monitoring to create a resilient email security posture. By understanding these top threats and adopting effective mitigation strategies, organizations can keep their cloud email environments secure and safeguard their critical data. By implementing these defenses, organizations can not only respond to today’s threats but also anticipate and counteract emerging risks in the cloud email security landscape.
