What Is Email Security?
Email security solutions comprise all the technology and policies that are designed to protect email content and communications against cyberattacks.
Email remains the central form of communication for most organizations. This strong dependency on email is why it is important to have robust email protection services. Email security should protect an email inbox from everyday hackers, malware, and advanced attacks like phishing. It should protect a brand from imposters posing as trusted colleagues, vendors, and partners intent on defrauding the brand.
THE EVER-INCREASING PRICE TO PAY AS A DIRECT RESULT OF ADVANCED EMAIL ATTACKS:
The FBI's IC3 2023 Internet Crime Report estimated that over $3.17 billion in losses were attributed as a direct result of successful phishing, spoofing, and BEC scams!
According to Verizon's 2024 DBIR report, over the last two years the median transaction amount of a Business Email Compromise (BEC) attack was around $50,000.
IC3 also reported adjusted losses of nearly $60 million due to ransom-ware attacks. And the DBIR named ransomware as THE top threat across 92% of industries.
Why Securing Email Communications Is Important
As enterprise email security threats continue to evolve and become more sophisticated, your employees’ inboxes also become more vulnerable. According to Gartner’s 2023 Market Guide for Email Security, email continues to be a significant attack vector for both malware and credential theft through phishing and is the culprit for the delivery of 40% of ransomware attacks and 19% of total data breaches.
And with the average cost of a data breach now at nearly $4.88 million – a a 10% increase over last year's and the highest EVER – per IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach report, securing your email communications with the right solution has never been more important.
So you need robust protection from a wide range of email-based threats – spam, ransomware, phishing, business email compromise (BEC), data loss, and more. And you also need to balance security with the need to continuously collaborate. Any delays to email communications can be costly and frustrating.
What Is an Email Security Solution?
Email security solutions function as a barrier for email communications within an organization's network by inspecting incoming emails for advanced threats and by monitoring outbound email traffic. With more pervasive cyberattacks at every intersection, it’s imperative to protect your email infrastructure from being infiltrated.
Thus, a solution that protects your on-prem, cloud, or hybrid environment is a requisite step on the course towards complete threat protection. As headlines of the last few years have shown, threat actors don’t prioritize one type of business or industry – becoming a target is a looming threat for enterprise organizations to small businesses and consumers.
How Do These Solutions Work?
Email security solutions rely on layered defenses to protect organizations. And while many solutions contain built-in security features and controls like spam filters or the ability to set alerts that warn of unknown senders, many services fall short when it comes to additional protections that TRULY defend against evolving cyber threats and email vector attacks.
A comprehensive email security solution can protect email from many external threats and even internal attacks. Thus, it is essential to have a solution that goes above and beyond the default which stands OUT from the crowd and stands UP against commonplace scams and advanced attacks, such as impersonation and social engineering.
Choosing the Best Email Security Solution
Whether you're on-prem or in the cloud, the best email security solutions extend beyond traditional defenses, integrating advanced threat protection through AI-powered data science, global threat intel, automated threat remediation and API-based integrations to seamlessly deliver threat protection in various email environments.
Key features to look for include:
Ease of Use & Interoperability
On-Prem, Cloud, or Hybrid Deployments
Advanced Email Threat Protection
API-Based Integration
DKIM, DMARC & SPF Authentication
Analysis & Reporting
Discover which email security solutions are considered key players
and how capabilities differ among vendors:
Cloud-Based Email Security Solutions
Fortra offers a plethora of comprehensive coverage of your organization’s cloud-based email environment with its Email Security product portfolio – from staging and delivery of advanced email threats, through analysis and reporting, and following up through automated remediation. These include:
Cloud Email Protection
An integrated cloud email security platform that detects and remediates advanced email threats including BEC, spear phishing, and targeted social engineering.
Threat Intelligence Services
Disrupts threat actors, prevents fraud, and enriches security controls by delivering critical insight before attacks strike.
Suspicious Email Analysis
Complementary to Cloud Email Protection, SEA protects against threats that reach user inboxes by detecting, analyzing, and mitigating emails designed to scam employees.
Phishing Simulation & Training
Email security awareness training solutions reduce the likelihood of successful email attacks by teaching end users how recognize, report, and act on suspicious activity.
