An email security service must be capable of performing certain tasks from detecting snowshoe spam and compromised cloud accounts to simulating phishing attacks, sentiment analysis, and oversight of east-west traffic. Here are four things a company should look for in an email security service.
Protection Against Malicious Attachments
Email security services need to go a step further than filtering spams and address end-user/human error to the maximum extent possible. The Advanced Spam Filter (ASF) detects and protects against malicious attachments. It also flags messages that might contain suspicious activity for the user to verify before clicking on them. Advanced spam filter blocks suspicious messages from entering a user’s inbox to help them avoid clicking on something they shouldn’t click on. This protection feature should be added to other products of Microsoft like Word and Teams to ensure that suspicious or abnormal activity is highlighted.
Although no email security service can prevent human error. So, customers must be educated to inspect the email by checking the sender’s email address and examining the email header and body for unusual spelling mistakes to make sure that the sender is legitimate before clicking on anything attached.
Eradicating Email Entry
Email is the starting point for social engineering attacks. It is the most used attack vector for opportunistic and targeted attacks. Emails are knowns as the delivery vehicle for a dropper or a link to an exploit kit or phishing website.
Email threats are a blend of social engineering, identity deception, phishing sites, malware, and exploits. Technology innovations should be complemented to combat email threats that don’t contain an attachment or a URL.
Ability to Detect Compromised Cloud Accounts
The majority of cybercrimes are now associated with business email compromise (BEC). BEC means when a rival or attacker is spoofing a user’s display name or email address or sending emails from a trusted third-party account. Companies must spot where the most risk lies in their business, such as in accounts, payable, or finance.
As the use of Office 365 has grown, it has led to an overlap between email threats and cloud threats. Companies should be able to identify between compromised accounts, malicious third-party apps, or data leakage. Web applications and browser extensions replicate something that a user is likely to trust, such as SharePoint, and then try to attack by trapping a user to open a third-party file.
Businesses must be able to identify a compromised account, whether it is directly through a credential or indirectly through some sort of token.
Blocking Spam is not Enough
Since Office 365 is online now, an employee’s email can be accessed from any device. Businesses now face threats that didn’t even exist before, such as account takeover, lateral phishing, and business email compromise (BEC). In such circumstances, they can’t leave span protection behind.
There are some ways to derange Microsoft Exchange, such as through spams or attacks that may shut down the server altogether. Office 365 has made it easier for an attacker to remain unnoticed as it’s gathering information all time.
