Importance of Email Security
Every single business will have email accounts that they use to:
- Contact customers
- Engage with other businesses
- Communicate internally
Email is the main business communication tool nowadays, still eclipsing live-messenger platforms like Microsoft Teams or Slack. With that in mind, the bulk of your company’s resources, files, private documents, and sensitive messages will flow through email accounts.
With so much information existing on someone’s email account, they’re a major target for attackers.
By breaking into an email account, malicious actors can farm other account details, capture any sensitive documents, and directly see into the internal comms of a business. This valuable sphere has made email attacks and threat vectors that seek to gain access to email accounts much more common.
This problem is only getting worse…
Businesses need to create rigorous security controls around their email accounts, which is where email security platforms come in. These enhance existing email security features to prevent against the vast majority of attacks.
Key Features of Effective Email Security Platforms
There are a range of common features that effective email security platforms will include:
- Zero-Trust Email Access: Especially in corporate environments, zero trust controls mean that employees have to authenticate their identity whenever they log into a company account. Implementing these controls within an email platform ensures that only the employee can get into their account.
- URL Scanning: URL scanning is a process where any links that are embedded into an email go through a security process that searches for markers of malicious content. If the email security platform detects potentially malicious content, it will block the email from arriving to a user’s account, forwarding it instead to the IT department to inspect.
- Suspicious Entry Alerts: If someone has accessed an email account from a location that is uncommon for that account, then many effective email security platforms will flag this with the IT department. Whether this is IP-based or even a response to unusual user behavior on the account, this will prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing company information via the email account.
- 컴플라이언스 지원: Another important aspect of email security is regulatory compliance. The best email security platforms will automate the vast majority of compliance.
3 Best Practices for Implementing Email Security Platforms
When implementing an email security platform into existing email architecture, there are a number of best practices that you should follow.
- Enable MFA: One of the first actions you should take once you have implemented a new email security platform is to turn on MFA, which will ensure that your employees then have to attach alternative verification devices. This will add another layer of security to all of your accounts with relative ease.
- Conduct Tests: After you have configured your email security platform, spend time sending through fake phishing threats and other common vectors. By using red teaming, you can create highly complex email threats and see which ones get through your defenses. You can then further configure your platform to prevent even these advanced threats.
- Update Regularly: Regularly update your email security platform to bring it to the most recent patch number, which will help incorporate new defense strategies and ensure you have the most up-to-date version of your software.
Checklist for ESPs: What to Look For
The best email security companies will always offer a similar range of features and functions that will help keep you safe.
Here is what you should look out for when seeking a great email security partner:
- Offers AI Support: Your business can improve its email security with AI in a number of ways. General AI tools can improve automation and help move through incoming emails in real-time. Additionally, Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools will help defend against more complex phishing attempts, which are becoming increasingly common.
- Integrate with Existing Architecture: Integrating your email security platform should not mean that you have to make a radical change to your email platform itself. The best solutions will be able to integrate your existing architecture, streamlining implementation and making things as easy as possible for your staff.
- Provides a User-Friendly Experience: Complex and rigorous defenses don’t have to be difficult to manage and interact with. The best email security platforms understand this and offer IT departments an easy-to-learn experience when starting with the new software.
Email Security with HEC from Check Point
Email is the leading business domain for communication, connecting enterprises, customers, and other businesses from all around the world. As a central pillar of communication, email has also become a major target for malicious actors. Working with an effective email security platform can help to keep your business safe from cyber threats and protect your employees.
Check Point offers Harmony Email & Collaboration Suite (HEC), an industry-leading email security and analysis platform. By using NLP, Check Point is able to offer a high degree of threat prevention, preventing more than 99% of phishing attempts, even those that use highly evasive misdirection strategies.
Get started with protecting your email today by requesting a demo.
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