The Importance of AI in Email Security
Email has long been one of the prime threats to corporate cybersecurity. Phishing emails are a common method for cybercriminals to gain access to an organization’s systems or collect sensitive data such as login credentials or payment card details. In the past, these phishing emails were relatively easy to detect due to grammatical errors, implausible pretexts (like the Nigerian prince scam), and other red flags. However, phishing attacks have grown much more sophisticated over time and have become very difficult for humans to detect.
AI can enhance the detection of these malicious emails by moving beyond traditional, rules-based threat detection. AI builds custom models and learns over time, enabling it to identify novel attacks as they emerge.
How AI Identifies Phishing Content
As phishing emails grow more sophisticated, a multi-modal approach is essential for the detection of malicious emails. Some of the ways that AI can identify phishing content include:
- Behavioral Analysis: AI tools can monitor email traffic and learn normal communication patterns. Phishing emails often deviate from these patterns, enabling AI to pick up on the anomaly.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP enables AI to read and understand the content of an email. With this understanding, AI can identify warning signs of phishing content, such as an attempt to create a sense of urgency or drive the recipient to click on a link or open an attachment.
- Attachment Analysis: Infected attachments are a common method for delivering malware to a target computer. AI can be used in sandbox analysis to determine whether an attachment contains malicious content before allowing it to continue to its destination.
- Malicious URL Detection: AI also has the ability to identify malicious sites linked to phishing emails. Once identifying a URL in an email, AI can analyze the indicated site to determine whether it is likely to be a phishing site.
- Threat Intelligence: Organizations can subscribe to threat intelligence feeds to receive indicators of compromise (IoCs). AI can use these IoCs to identify malicious attachments, URLs, and phishing campaigns or can generate its own based on newly detected phishing campaigns.
- Incident Response: After identifying a phishing campaign, AI can be used to automate incident response procedures. For example, user accounts or computers that were likely compromised by a phishing attack can be quarantined to limit the impact on the organization.
How AI Impacts Email Security
As phishing attacks become more sophisticated, traditional methods of detecting them grow less effective. As a result, organizations face a growing risk of sophisticated phishing attacks.
The use of AI for email security enables companies to more effectively manage these risks. AI brings new tools and techniques for threat detection to the table, enabling organizations to identify phishing campaigns that might otherwise be missed and more rapidly respond to successful phishing attacks.
The Main Benefits of AI for Email Security
The use of AI for email security brings several benefits to an organization, including the following:
- Improved Threat Detection: AI offers several new methods of identifying new and sophisticated phishing attacks. This means that phishing campaigns that might otherwise have been successful will be identified and blocked before they do damage.
- Enhanced Threat Intelligence: Traditionally, threat intelligence and IoCs were generated and distributed manually, limiting their utility. AI enables the automated generation of IoCs, allowing them to be applied in real-time.
- Faster Incident Response: AI can automatically quarantine or remediate security incidents based on predefined playbooks. By speeding up incident response, it reduces the damage that an attacker has the opportunity to do.
Secure Email With Check Point
The evolution of both phishing attacks and AI has made AI essential for email security. As phishing attacks grow more sophisticated, traditional methods of detecting and responding to them grow less effective. However, AI has also evolved and brings new capabilities that enable more effective and efficient threat prevention, detection, and response.
Check Point’s Harmony Email & Collaboration is at the cutting edge of email security, leveraging new technologies like generative AI to more effectively protect the business. This has earned it the distinction of being labeled a Leader in the 2023 Forrester Wave for Enterprise Email Security.
A modern email security solution is one that integrates AI and ML to detect and block the most sophisticated phishing threats. Learn more about how Harmony Email & Collaboration can protect your organization with a free demo.
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