Email protection should not be taken lightly. A lot of remote work is taking place, and many people are using emails to communicate. Email can put you at risk of malware, scams, stolen passwords, stolen devices, and phishing.
Without functional email protection tools, you may be giving attackers an immediate route into your resources and sensitive data. The IT market is becoming saturated with all email protection programs claiming to be effective.
Understanding email security
Email security is the protocols and practices that are put in place to safeguard sensitive emails and protect against malware attacks. Encryption and certificates can protect email servers in collaboration with technologies such as Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. Attackers often entice recipients using deceptive messages to click on links, open attachments or release sensitive information.
An enterprise email security solution should be put in place to protect a business against BEC attacks, APTs, ATO, malware, phishing, and more. Email security also includes elements such as fraud protection, gateway security, and user training. Instead of relying on firewalls alone, you could employ a professional who understands the issues of security.
Security policies
Email remains an important part of today’s business operations. When choosing software for your business, you need to consider the kind of security it provides. Besides the consideration, you need to establish policies regarding how to handle the flow of information in your organization. One of the best policies relates to how to view email content. To act accordingly, it is important to understand the content of the mail messages that flow through your servers.
After putting in place these guidelines, you can enact different security policies on the emails. If the policies help to detect security incidents, your organization must have actionable intelligence regarding the scope of the threat. This may help to determine the damage caused by the attack.
Security tools
A secure email gateway installed in the cloud or business premises should boost email security. This should offer multi-layered protection against malicious and unwanted messages and also ensure business continuity.
The security controls should allow the security teams to be confident in securing users from possible threats. The goal is to maintain sound communications among employees and between the organization and third parties.
Using an email encryption solution could reduce the risks related to data loss, policy violations, and regulatory violations. Such a solution can work regardless of the size of your organization. The goal is to protect sensitive data while making it available to legitimate users, including business partners and affiliates.
Common email protection tools
Having understood the principles of email protection, let’s dig deeper into the best tools you can use for your business.
SolarWinds Identity Monitor
SolarWinds Identity Monitor is a dynamic and comprehensive email protection tool. Its features integrate genuine usefulness, sophistication, and scope to deliver optimal email protection. This tool employs a functional and user-friendly interface. It is scalable, flexible, and can operate without compromising the value as your business grows.
The capabilities of this tool include:
- Sending notifications in case of any data leakage or theft
- Monitoring email domains for signs of exposure
- Resetting passwords to ensure they are not compromised.
SolarWinds Identity Monitor enables you to create a domain watch list and view it in a table format. You will also see the last time the domain was discovered and the number of records associated with that domain. It will also be easy to perform actions on domains within a page, edit entries and adjust column visibility. In case of any leak, the tool will notify you to take immediate action, such as resetting passwords and interrogating recent logins.
Proofpoint email protection
Proofpoint comes with many IT security products such as Security Awareness Training, Advanced Threat Protection, Information Protection, and Cloud App Security. This tool is effective as it establishes various layers of security, so it becomes hard for malware threats to attack your emails.
The Proofpoint email protection program controls all the components of inbound and outbound emails while identifying threats before they cause damage. It also safeguards private data and information against unauthorized access and sharing. This offers an excellent way to establish functional filtering policies, antivirus policies, and complex firewall rules. The protection program leverages things like user bulk mail actions to boost threat detection accuracy.
Barracuda Total Email Protection
Barracuda Total Email Protection is a combination of email protection tools. The tool is easy to implement and includes basic protection utilities such as encryption, spam blocking, email filtering, and archiving procedures. The Barracuda bundle offers a one-stop solution that simplifies post-purchase evaluation and due diligence, thereby eliminating the need to incorporate other products.
One of the products included in this bundle is the Barracuda Sentinel. This uses the principle of artificial intelligence to detect advanced threats such as account takeover and phishing attacks. Another product in this bundle is the Barracuda PhishLine which offers email protection training through a simulation platform. This tool allows you to learn how to identify email threats on various devices, including those outside the email gateways.
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM)
SAM helps to monitor emails and is also an important part of the broader monitoring processes. This tool is effective because it consolidates all the email monitoring into one dashboard. This helps to streamline oversight and the security to always keep you informed.
SAM has an out-of-the-box Exchange server monitoring to provide detailed insights into behavioral patterns that may lead to poor performance. The insights include email delivery success for IMAP4, MAPI, and POP3 protocols, as well as testing round-trip time. With SAM, you can monitor your email servers and gain better visibility across the top web clients.
Conclusion
The best email protection solutions require a layered technique to safeguard the integrity of the information transmitted through emails. This is due to the multiple attacks that are evident in today’s digital world. With the above email protection tools, you will be able to prevent cybercriminals and hackers from penetrating your network.