An email gateway is a type of email server that protects an organizations or users internal email servers. This server acts as a gateway through which every incoming and outgoing email passes through.
Challenges
As a mission-critical application for organizations everywhere, email is frequently targeted by cybercriminals and fraudsters.
Despite the obvious benefits of email, it has a major downside: weak cybersecurity.
As a matter of fact, according to Radicati Group – Email Statistics Report, 91% of Cyber Crime starts with email and it only takes one to infiltrate your organization.
The most common techniques that threaten email security are:
Spam
Most bad email is the unsolicited type referred to as junk mail or spam. The problem for many small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in dealing with unsolicited emails is that contain often malicious links or malware attachments.
Identity theft
This is the process of stealing personal information — names, addresses, social security numbers, passwords, etc. — and using them for malicious purposes. Identity theft can happen to anyone.
Phishing
This is a method that includes gathering personal information using deceptive emails and websites. The objective is to trick the recipient into opening a seemingly legitimate email and enticing them to click on malicious links or download an attachment.
Ransomware
Many ransomware variants are delivered via email and are extremely common these days. It is a type of malicious software that blocks access to a computer system or file by encrypting it until the victim pays a ransom fee to the attacker. In many cases, the ransom comes with a deadline, and if not paid on time, the data is gone forever.
Business email compromise (BEC)
This scheme involves hijacking business email accounts to facilitate fraudulent wire transfers. Like phishing, it remains popular because it doesn’t require complex tools.
How can this technology help you?
A Secure Email Gateway (SEG) is a device or software used to monitor emails that are being sent and received. The solution can block messages that are unwanted including spam, phishing attacks, malware or fraudulent content. Outgoing messages can be analyzed to prevent sensitive data from leaving the organization or to automatically encrypt emails that contain sensitive information.
Secure Email Gateway functionality can be deployed as a cloud service, or as an on-premises appliance, depending on requirements.
Advantages
Key capabilities of an Email Gateway Security solution are:
Spam Filtering
All SEGs use filtering technologies that blocks or quarantines email from known spam email domains. They also use algorithms to detect patterns that commonly show up in spam emails, such as keywords and malicious links, which help block new spam emails from entering email inboxes.
Virus and Malware Protection
Secure Email Gateways block viruses and malware from infecting business networks.
Phishing Protection
Email gateways provide businesses with a level of protection from phishing attacks. Using anti-fraud technologies, they can spot and prevent sender spoofing, and use domain name validation, to identify and block phishing attacks. The virus and malware protection will also remove emails with malicious URLs and attachments, which will stop emails with links to phishing websites from entering inboxes.
Admin Controls and Reporting
SEGs give admins control over all email policies and quarantines. They offer admins the ability to manage security over the whole email network, with a centralized admin dashboard.
Additionally, the following services can be provided:
Anomaly Detection
Lookalike Domain Detection
Web Isolation Services
Network Sandbox
Content Disarm and Reconstruction
Time-of-Click Analysis
Display Name Spoof Detection
URL Rewriting
Reporting and Conformance on Inbound Email
Domain-Based Message Authentication
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