More than 90 percent of hacks start with email

Email has become a key communications tool for today’s businesses. It’s used in business for everything from regular communication to the closing of deals and the transfer of valuable data. According to Templafy, as of 2019, there were a mind-blowing 293.6 billion emails sent every day.

But with the convenience and ease of email also comes threats. A piece by Deloitte reported 91 percent of all cyberattacks begin with a phishing email to an unexpected victim. One of the best methods for preventing such email-based attacks is to employ email filtering solutions.

Email Filtering

The attack vector of email is the number one way nefarious actors are getting into your system and they are using email as a gateway to do so a majority of the time. To increase your security, filtering out emails is a must.

The IT and cybersecurity professionals at ORAM Corporate Advisors highly recommend software called Mimecast for email filtering for our clients. We like Mimecast because it allows us to increase our cyber resilience by:

  • Blocking ransomware
  • Stopping business compromises
  • Preventing data loss

By using this particular filtering service, we are able to fine-tune our email security and threat protection. It is one of the most powerful email filtering programs available. It also gives you the most control over your email filtering capabilities ranging from URLs to attachments, impersonation emails, and more.

More About Mimecast

With the sheer number of emails passing through our networks each day, a solution to filtering out bad emails, attachments, and the like is an absolute necessity. The method for filtering emails must be agile to adapt to the ever-changing threats thrown at businesses through email as well as scalable to grow with any company. That’s where Mimecast comes in.

Mimecast provides the ideal email filtering solution to protect your clients, employees, and proprietary data. The software offers a multi-layered analytic engine that inspects billions of emails, attachments, and URLs every day for seamless, always-on protection that doesn’t interfere with productivity. With millions of daily users, Mimecast offers the sophistication to identify new threats quickly and rapidly adapts to benefit all of its consumers globally.

Not only does Mimecast filter emails, but it offers a complete administrative experience through a single web console to give you better visibility of the threats your organization is facing along with simplified management.

It’s also incredibly scalable so works well as a world-class security solution for small mom and pop businesses as well as major corporations. Mimecast offers flexible storage ability to scale your usage up or down as your company demands change while maintaining constant, 24/7, 100 percent service levels for your system. After all, continuous protection is necessary as the bad guys never seem to sleep.

How Mimecast Works

The core of Mimecast’s success as an email filtering solution lies in its secure email gateway. That gateway comes complete with data leak protection, content control, and targeted threat protection. This weeds out bad URLs, potentially dangerous attachments, impersonation emails, and internal email protection.

Mimecast also offers additional capabilities including email continuity sync and recovery, large file send, and secure messaging. These are all expanded protections that organizations can choose from to promote better cybersecurity, meet government security regulations, and better protect their data.

Targeted Threat Protection

From spear-phishing attacks to email-borne ransomware, the right email filtering solution will offer defense against it all including viruses and spam. The right email filtering software will provide filtering for your outbound and internal emails as well as your incoming emails. This also helps prevent internal threats and sabotage as well as simple human error, which accounts for 60 percent of security breaches, according to InfoSecurity magazine.

Additionally, a strong email filtering software will provide URL protection to block malicious ITLs including pre-click discovery, inline employee education, and blocking dangerous files. You will want to employ a program that also offers real-time scanning for every click.

Attachments and impersonation emails can also cause serious issues. Your filtering solution should protect against malicious email attachments so employees can’t open one that is really carrying malware or another nasty bug. It should also protect your business against impersonation attacks that trick you and your employees by pretending to be a trusted sender. For example, Mimecast provides a real-time examination of inbound emails by display name, reply-to information, body content, and character detection.

When it comes to internal emails, all traffic (inbound, outbound, and internal) should be inspected for malicious links and files to prevent the spread of attacks that lead to data loss. Whatever program you choose should also provide continuous rechecks of emails as well as automated and/or manual remediation of malicious or undesirable emails. Finally, a filtering solution that offers mailbox continuity to put a stop to downtime is also an absolute necessity.

For more information about email filtering solutions, Mimecast, or to improve the cyber resilience of your company, contact ORAM Corporate Advisors at (617) 933-5060 today. The call is free and there is no obligation.