Email is a fundamental tool for business communications. However, due to its wide and ubiquitous usage it remains a primary vector for cyberattacks making email protection a cornerstone of business resilience. From phishing to ransomware, email-based threats can penetrate an organization's defenses leading to data breaches, financial losses, and reputational damage. Among the data in Verizon's Data Breach Investigation Report from 2023, there were 3 important findings:

1. Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks doubled-representing 60% of social engineering incidents, which means that advanced attacks like credential harvesting, impersonations, domain spoofing, and others are the most daunting ones as they can result in financial risk and reputational loss.
2. 74% of breaches involve a human element, such as human error, use of stolen credentials, or social engineering
3. Three primary ways in which attackers access an organization's data are via stolen credentials, phishing, and exploitation of vulnerabilities 
   

Overall, in 2024 we are seeing that successful attacks are usually email-initiated. This is because the ease with which email can be used to distribute malicious content makes it a preferred method for attackers. Consequently, businesses must prioritize email security as the first line of defense against cyber threats.

The Role of Email Protection in Business Resilience

1. Preventing Data Breaches: Email security solutions help prevent data breaches by filtering out malicious emails before they reach employees' inboxes. By leveraging advanced threat detection techniques such as data science and machine learning, these solutions can identify and block sophisticated phishing attempts and malware.
2. Protecting Financial Assets: Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks can result in significant financial losses. Thus, implementing a robust email security solution that can protect against advanced email threats is requisite for organizations.
3. Enhancing Employee Awareness: Security awareness training is an integral part of a comprehensive email security strategy. By educating employees on how to recognize and respond to email threats, businesses can significantly reduce the likelihood of successful attacks. Phishing simulations and interactive training sessions can reinforce best practices and foster a security-conscious culture.
4. Automating Incident Response: Automated incident response capabilities can drastically reduce the time it takes to identify and mitigate email threats. It relies on advanced technologies like AI and ML and automated workflows to streamline and expedite the handling of security incidents.

Implementing a Comprehensive Email Security Strategy

The benefits of moving to Microsoft Office 365, such as ease of communication and collaboration while working anywhere in the world from any device at any time, are evident. With high volumes of email moving in and out of organizations, it is important to make sure that email security solutions can keep up with daily threats circulating to find new ways to infiltrate. M365 offers different security tiers for email security, thus their capabilities vary a lot depending on the type of license an organization purchase.

While M365 is good at basic email security like anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-spam, archiving and encryption, it does not deliver advanced email capabilities to fully protect against sophisticated email threats. In fact, most secure email gateways (SEGs) were not designed to stop advanced email threats like identity deception, impersonation, BEC, etc. While some M365 Exchange Online Protection-tiered plans come with Microsoft Defender (or it can be bolted on), other third-party email security solutions in the market provide higher levels of protection against more sophisticated, targeted attacks, such as spear phishing.

So, to effectively protect against email threats and enhance business resilience, organizations should consider a multi-layered approach to email security. Today, Integrated Cloud Email Security (ICES) solutions provide capabilities to identify, detect, and prevent advanced email threats. These solutions can be deployed alongside M365 to ensure your organization's valuable information remains secure - whether it is hosted on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment. It's the help your enterprise needs, without any of the common email security hassles.

Most of these solutions use a combination of data science and ML models to evaluate a variety of unique attributes in emails to further protect users' inboxes. ICES solutions add an extra layer of security by covering areas that might be beyond the scope of Microsoft's native capabilities. This includes enhanced protection against spear phishing, BEC, and other advanced persistent threats (APTs). The embedded integration ensures no gaps in coverage, providing comprehensive protection for all email communications.

In conclusion, an ICES email security solution offers a powerful and comprehensive defense against email threats when combined with Microsoft Security. The synergy between advanced threat detection, real-time intelligence, and automated incident response within an ICES solution, creates a formidable barrier against cyber threats when coupled alongside Microsoft's robust built-in protections.

Keeping digital information safe and advocating for proactive measures to protect sensitive information through email is vital to an organization. This is where integrated email security solutions come in to provide comprehensive phishing protection and unstructured data protection.

If organizations adopt this holistic approach, it can bolster their email security posture, ensure resilience against evolving cyber threats, and ensure the integrity of their communications.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ravisha Chugh is an Email Security Evangelist at global cybersecurity software and services provider Fortra. With over a decade of experience in cybersecurity, Ravisha is passionate about helping organizations keep their digital information safe. She understands the proactive measures and implementation strategies required to protect sensitive information over email and guard against the evolving threat landscape. At Fortra, Ravisha works closely with enterprise security and IT teams, and guides Fortra's email security product strategy and messaging accordingly. Previously, as a Senior Principal Analyst at Gartner, she advised clients on email security, phishing protection, and unstructured data security.