Email Protection: Threats, Solution Categories, and Best Practices

Understanding Email Security Threats

Email security threats pose significant risks to organizations, impacting their operational integrity and financial stability. A recent survey of 500 cybersecurity leaders from industries such as financial services, legal, government, and healthcare reveals the pervasive nature of these threats and the challenges they present:

• Phishing attacks remain the most common and damaging email security threat. 94% of organizations reported falling victim to phishing attacks in the past 12 months. 79% of account takeover incidents began with a phishing email—attackers use compromised accounts to move laterally within a network, sell credentials, and bypass traditional security measures.
• Email security is a top concern, with 95% of respondents saying they are concerned about email threats. The top concerns were phishing, compromised supply chain email accounts, and internal account takeovers.
• The increasing use of AI in phishing campaigns, in particular the use of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, enable cybercriminals to create sophisticated and convincing phishing emails. 61% of cybersecurity leaders expressed serious concern over the potential impact of AI-driven phishing tactics.
• Outbound email security incidents, particularly those involving data loss and exfiltration, are also prevalent. 91% of organizations experienced such incidents, with 94% reporting adverse effects.
• The operational impact of email threats can be severe, including client loss, reputational damage, litigation, and even cessation of operations. 58% of organizations had to cease operations temporarily due to email-related data breaches.

Key Capabilities of Email Protection Tools

Email protection tools offer various capabilities designed to safeguard email communications from cyber threats. Key capabilities include:

1. Spam filtering: Automatically identifies and filters out unwanted and potentially harmful emails, reducing the risk of phishing and other scams reaching users’ inboxes.
2. Content filtering: Scans emails for specific keywords, phrases, or patterns that may indicate spam, malicious content, or policy violations. This helps enforce organizational email policies and block harmful content.
3. Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Monitors outgoing emails for sensitive information and prevents unauthorized sharing of confidential data. This is crucial for complying with data protection regulations and safeguarding intellectual property.
4. Multi-factor authentication (MFA): Requires users to verify their identity through multiple methods before accessing email accounts, adding an extra layer of security against unauthorized access.
5. Threat intelligence: Uses real-time threat intelligence to stay updated on the latest cyber threats and dynamically adjust protection measures. This helps in proactively identifying and mitigating new threats.

Main Types of Email Protection Solutions

Email Encryption

Email encryption is the process of encoding email messages to ensure that only authorized recipients can read them. This is typically achieved through the use of public key infrastructure (PKI), where the sender encrypts the email with the recipient’s public key, and the recipient decrypts it with their private key. The encryption protects sensitive information from being intercepted and read by unauthorized parties during transmission. 

This is particularly important for emails containing personal data, financial information, or confidential business communications. End-to-end encryption ensures that the email remains secure from the moment it leaves the sender’s device until it is opened by the intended recipient. 

Antivirus and Antimalware Scanners

Antivirus and antimalware scanners can detect and remove malicious software from email messages and attachments. They use signature-based detection methods to identify known malware, as well as heuristic and behavioral analysis to detect new, previously unknown threats. 

By scanning incoming and outgoing emails, these tools can prevent malware infections that might lead to data breaches, system damage, or ransomware attacks. Advanced scanners also offer real-time protection, automatically updating their threat databases to recognize the latest malware variants. 

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

Advanced threat protection (ATP) is a set of sophisticated security measures intended to detect, analyze, and mitigate advanced cyber threats that traditional security tools might miss. ATP solutions often include features such as sandboxing, where suspicious attachments and links are executed in a secure, isolated environment to observe their behavior without risking the actual network. 

ATP solutions also use machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify patterns and anomalies that indicate threats, such as zero-day exploits and targeted phishing attacks. These tools can provide detailed threat intelligence, helping organizations understand the nature and origin of attacks. 

Spam Filtering 

Spam filtering helps prevent unwanted and potentially dangerous emails from reaching users’ inboxes. Spam filters use a combination of techniques, including keyword analysis, pattern recognition, and machine learning, to identify and block spam emails. These filters analyze the content, sender information, and email headers to determine the likelihood that an email is spam.

Advanced spam filtering solutions also incorporate reputation-based filtering, where the sender’s reputation is evaluated based on past behaviors and known associations with spam activities. By continuously updating their databases with new spam signatures and emerging threat patterns, spam filters reduce the volume of junk emails and lower the risk of phishing.

Learn more in our detailed guide to email filtering 

Email Archiving

Email archiving involves storing emails in a secure, centralized repository for long-term preservation and easy retrieval. This ensures compliance with legal and regulatory requirements by maintaining accurate and accessible records of all email communications. It provides a reliable method for retaining business-critical communications, aiding in disaster recovery and business continuity planning. 

Email archiving facilitates the search and retrieval of specific emails for legal or investigative purposes, supporting e-discovery processes. Additionally, it reduces the load on primary email servers by offloading older emails to the archive, improving system performance.

Anti-Phishing Tools

Anti-phishing tools are designed to identify and block phishing attempts, protecting users from credential theft and other fraudulent activities. They use machine learning and pattern recognition to identify phishing emails based on common characteristics and behaviors. URL analysis examines links within emails to detect malicious URLs that may lead to phishing websites or malware downloads. 

User reporting allows users to report suspected phishing emails, which are then analyzed and added to threat databases for broader protection. Education and training provide simulated phishing attacks and training modules to improve user awareness and response to phishing threats.

Email Security Solutions

Comprehensive email security solutions integrate multiple protective measures to create a robust defense against a wide range of email-borne threats. Unified threat management (UTM) combines various security functions such as antivirus, antispam, and web filtering into a single solution, simplifying management and improving efficiency. 

Cloud-based email security leverages cloud infrastructure to provide scalable, always-on protection without the need for extensive on-premises hardware. Behavioral analysis monitors user behavior to detect anomalies that may indicate compromised accounts or insider threats. Incident response provides tools and processes for responding to email security incidents, including threat remediation, user notifications, and forensic analysis.

Best Practices for Email Protection

Organizations can implement the following practices to better protect themselves against email-based threats.

1. Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) adds an extra layer of security to email accounts by requiring users to provide two or more verification factors to gain access. This typically involves something the user knows (password), something the user has (security token or mobile device), and sometimes something the user is (biometric verification). 

Implementing MFA reduces the risk of unauthorized access even if passwords are compromised. It ensures that email accounts remain secure against common attacks such as phishing, credential stuffing, and brute force attacks. 

2. Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) restricts email access based on users’ roles within the organization. Implementing RBAC involves:

• Defining roles and permissions: Assign specific email access permissions based on job roles and responsibilities.
• Principle of least privilege (PoLP): Ensure users have only the necessary access required for their tasks.
• Regular reviews: Periodically review and update roles and permissions to reflect changes in job functions or organizational structure.

RBAC minimizes the risk of unauthorized access and potential data breaches by ensuring that only authorized users can access sensitive email content.

Use Email Security Protocols

Email security protocols such as Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) and Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) provide encryption and authentication for email messages. S/MIME uses digital certificates to sign and encrypt emails, ensuring that the content remains confidential and unaltered during transit. PGP uses a combination of symmetric and asymmetric encryption to secure email communications. 

Additionally, protocols like Transport Layer Security (TLS) ensure that the communication channel between email servers is encrypted, preventing interception and eavesdropping. Implementing these protocols helps maintain the integrity and confidentiality of email messages.

Monitor and Audit Email Activity

Email monitoring tools can track various metrics, including login attempts, email forwarding, and the sending of sensitive information. By analyzing these patterns, organizations can identify anomalies that may indicate a security breach or insider threat. 

Auditing email logs provides a record of email activities, enabling organizations to investigate incidents and ensure compliance with security policies and regulations. Implementing continuous monitoring and periodic audits helps maintain the security of email systems.

Secure Mobile Devices

Employees often use smartphones and tablets for email communication. Organizations should implement mobile device management (MDM) solutions to enforce security policies, such as requiring device encryption, remote wiping capabilities, and strong authentication measures. 

Ensuring that mobile email applications are up-to-date and using secure communication channels like VPNs can further protect email data. Additionally, educating employees about the risks of accessing email on public Wi-Fi networks and the importance of using secure connections helps prevent unauthorized access. 

Educate and Train Employees

Organizations should conduct regular training sessions to raise awareness about common email threats such as phishing, spear-phishing, and social engineering attacks. Employees should be taught how to recognize suspicious emails, avoid clicking on unknown links, and report potential threats to the IT department. 

Providing ongoing education ensures that employees stay informed about the latest cyber threats and best practices for email security. A well-informed workforce acts as a frontline defense against email-based attacks, reducing the likelihood of security breaches caused by human error.

Conduct Phishing Simulations

Phishing simulations involve sending simulated phishing emails to employees to test their awareness and response to phishing attacks. Conducting these simulations helps organizations:

• Assess Vulnerabilities: Identify employees who are susceptible to phishing attacks.
• Provide Targeted Training: Offer additional training and resources to employees who fail the simulations.
• Improve Overall Security Posture: Raise awareness and reinforce best practices for recognizing and responding to phishing attempts.

Regular phishing simulations ensure that employees remain vigilant and improve their ability to identify and avoid real phishing threats.

Email Security with Cynet

Cynet Email Security is a holistic security solution that provides mail protection for Cloud Email Gateways. It combines a variety of capabilities including attachment and URL scanning to ensure your inbox stays safe, real-time link protection which allows scanning the original target in real-time each visit, attachment extension filtering to block risky attachments and avoid malware disguised as harmless files, and policy controls  letting you block what’s bad and allow what’s trusted using customizable allowlists and blocklists.

Cynet Email Security provides the following capabilities:

• Automatically configure your Office365 gateway to be used with Cynet Email.
• Email attachment protection.
• Email link protection (including real-time checking of link targets when you open them).
• Tag emails that were sent from a domain that doesn’t match the administrator’s Office365 domain as External emails. You can also add domains that you consider “safe” and don’t need to be tagged as external.
• Create allowlists and blocklists for emails using the following parameters:
• Domain (URL)
• Sender email
• Recipient email
• File SHA256

In addition to email security, Cynet provides cutting edge capabilities:

• Advanced endpoint threat detection—full visibility and predicts how an attacker might operate, based on continuous monitoring of endpoints and behavioral analysis.
• Investigation and validation—search and review historic or current incident data on endpoints, investigate threats, and validate alerts. This allows you to confirm the threat before responding to it, reducing dwell-time and performing faster remediation.
• Rapid deployment and response—deploy across thousands of endpoints within two hours. You can then use it to perform automatic or manual remediation of threats on the endpoints, disrupt malicious activity and minimize damage caused by attacks.

Learn more about the Cynet 360 security platform.