The Role of Secure Email Gateways in Enhancing Email Security
Email security is a vital field. It aims to protect email from various threats and vulnerabilities. Securing email is critical. It shields sensitive data, averts unauthorized access, and keeps communications unharmed. Email is a vital system for personal and professional communication. In this article, we will deliberate how a secure email gateway can increase email security. Before that, let us understand Secure Email Gateways.
What is Secure Email Gateways?
Secure Email Gateways (SEGs) are essential for improving email security for companies. These gateways act as a wall between the email server and the Internet. They screen and examine all incoming and outgoing emails. A secure email gateway is vital for protecting your business. It blocks harmful emails from reaching the recipient and intercepts malicious emails, protecting user credentials and company data.
Who Benefits Most from Secure Email Gateways?
Organizations that depend on email need to safeguard communication information. Secure email gateways shield sensitive information in regulated industries like finance. Law, government, education, financial services, and non-profit organizations handle regulated data. All these sectors require SEG to secure their communication along with meeting rules and compliance.
Benefits of Secure Email Gateway
A Secure Email Gateway (SEG) can enhance the security of email communication. You can check its benefits here.
Compliance with regulations
Secure Email Gateway (SEG) helps organizations to follow standards like GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS by applying and imposing email security policies. It also offers thorough logs of email activity, which are beneficial for audits and inquiries.
Enhanced Visibility and Reporting
SEG reports on email volume, security breaches, and policy breaches. It helps organizations improve their email security. It enables swift reaction to security incidents by providing thorough reporting and forensic capabilities.
Customizable and Scalable Solutions
Secure Email Gateway lets companies create and implement security policies. They can tailor these to their needs and risk assessments. It adapts to the needs of growing businesses. It ensures security as email volume and users increase.
Improved Email Deliverability
Filtering spam and junk emails improves users’ email experience and reduces the risk of losing important messages in a crowded inbox. SEGs protect the organization’s email domain and stop harmful emails. This boosts the deliverability of genuine emails and maintains a good sender reputation.
Threat Detection and Prevention
SEG must have strong phishing detection and blocking, including spear phishing and whaling. Look for advanced malware and ransomware scanning features. They should analyse attachments and links for malicious content. Effective spam filtering is key to blocking unwanted, harmful emails. It stops them from reaching users’ inboxes.
Data Loss Prevention
Secure Email Gateway must recognize and protect sensitive data, such as PII and financial data. It can create and enforce data protection policies, which will stop unauthorized data sharing and ensure compliance with regulations.
Email Encryption
Encryption is the backbone of any website or email system. Encryption can be achieved with SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates, which encrypt data transmitted between a user’s browser and a server. A single SSL certificate secures one domain, while a multi-domain SSL certificate can secure multiple domains, making it a flexible option for businesses with various web properties. Ensure the SEG can auto-encrypt sensitive emails for data protection in transit. You should seek help to implement policy-based encryption. It should encrypt emails based on their content or recipient attributes.
Choosing a Secure Email Gateway: What to Consider
When selecting a Secure Email Gateway (SEG), assess its key features. They must meet your organization’s requirement of security for email gateway and need the below considerations.
Different Protection Layers and Techniques
Despite today’s tech, no single tool can ensure complete security for email gateway. You must test content, reputation, SMTP protocol, authentication, and also links and attachments. The best strategy is to combine security tools. Use code scanners, malware sandboxes, and DMARC verifications. Avoid solutions that use only one technique or vendor. If you do, integrate it with extra security layers.
User Awareness
You should train all staff and email users, including leaders. They must know their role in reducing cybersecurity risks. All employees must learn to spot signs of a breach and the latest hacker tactics. They should know the costs of a breach. It may occur from a careless click to an unsafe website or from a harmful, auto-downloading virus.
Domain Protection
Monitor your domain to guard your brand from impersonators. Shield yourself with robust security protocols. Implement DMARC, MTA-STS, SPF, and DKIM protection techniques and parameters for comprehensive protection. Regular checks ensure your digital identity remains secure.
Email Inspection
Harmful links, malware, and sharing of confidential information can happen internally in your system. The best email security is to ensure the SEG removes malicious emails before delivery, either automatically or manually.
Analytical Testing
The best SEG solutions can run critical tests and analyses. They help organizations improve their security. When switching from your current SEG to a new, advanced SEG, check how it enhances your ability to guard against risks and new attacks.
How Does Secure Email Gateway Work?
Secure Email Gateway acts as a firewall for your email. It screens all messages for malicious content. It contains features such as Virus and malware blocking, spam filter, content filter, and email archive.
Virus and Malware Prevention
Few emails that an organization receives are infected with viruses or malware. To prevent these emails from reaching their targets and causing harm, a secure email gateway needs to thoroughly inspect all emails and regularly stay updated on new threat patterns and features.
Email Filtering
Surprisingly, spam filtering takes up most of the processing power in a secure email gateway. Spam is prevented using a variety of methods. Typically, basic spam filtering includes a profiteering system that either blocks or puts into quarantine emails sent by recognized spammers. Spam detection can identify typical patterns seen in spam emails, like frequently used words by spammers and the presence of potentially harmful links that may lead recipients to malicious websites if clicked. A large number of email services permit users to mark spam messages and block the individuals sending them.
Filtering of content
Content filtering is commonly used on outgoing emails from employees within the organization. One way to use your secure email gateway is to stop certain sensitive documents from being sent to someone outside the organization or block image files or specific keywords from being sent via email.
Archiving of emails
Efficient management is required for email services, whether they are hosted in the cloud or on premise. Email administrators have long struggled with storage issues, and even with abundant cloud storage options, email archiving is still crucial for maintaining user mailboxes and system efficiency. Many companies are also worried about compliance, and storing emails is essential for preserving them for a specific duration.
Conclusion
You can choose a Secure Email Gateway (SEG). It must protect you, meet your needs, and fit your security plan. SEGs defend against harmful emails and attachments. Strong email security can prevent successful and attempted attacks on a business. If a SEG finds a possible email danger, it blocks the email, preventing it from reaching the intended receiver. This decreases the likelihood of a company becoming a target of an email cyberattack.
