This should come as no surprise, but email is the #1 attack vector used by cybercriminals. Do you know why? Because it works. Unsuspecting users are tricked every day into clicking malicious emails that make it to their inbox.
Yes, there are security measures, like secure email gateways (SEGs) that stop some threats. But did you know they only stop 50-70% of malicious emails that are targeting your company?
That means 30-50% of email threats bypass SEGs and make it into your employees’ inboxes.
How do we know?
Because we see thousands of missed threats every single day and here’s the proof.
So, where is your SEG failing? And more importantly, what do you need to do about it?
Secure Email Gateways Cannot Filter Many of Today’s New, Advanced Threats
Cybercriminals are constantly evolving their tactics to stay ahead of security measures. With a continuously changing threat landscape, it’s difficult for SEGs to stay up to date on new types of cyber-attacks.
As a perfect example, the use of malicious QR codes in emails is on the rise, with an average month-to-month increase of 270%, according to Cofense Intelligence. These email attacks make it past the SEG because these gateways are not able to scan the image embedded in the QR code.
Threat actors are also using social engineering tactics with threats like smishing (SMS text-based phishing) and vishing (voicemail-based phishing) to target employees. Both threats bypass SEGs and put your company at risk for a costly breach. A SEG just can’t keep up and stop these attacks.
It’s an unfortunate reality but relying on your SEG alone cannot provide adequate email security protection.
So, What Do You Need to Do?
To combat today’s cyber threats, you must use a multi-layered security approach. Enhancing your SEG with additional security measures including security awareness training and threat detection and response can help detect more advanced threats and reduce the risk of a breach.
Security Awareness Training (SAT)
Employees need to be aware of the various types of security threats out there and learn how to not only identify them, but also report them. Cofense PhishMe, the industry’s first SAT platform, offers award-winning training to millions of global users, including real-life email threat simulations, world-class training modules and one-click threat reporting capabilities.
Threat Detection & Response
Along with training, you also need an additional layer of threat detection and response protection to reduce the risk of a successful email security attack. Cofense Phishing Detection and Response (PDR) ingests thousands of reported phishing threats, analyzes every single one of them, and finds real, malicious phish every day. These threats have all been missed by secure email gateways that our global customers use as a first-line security defense. When a reported threat is analyzed and identified as malicious, Cofense PDR instantly quarantines it from that customer’s email system, while also automatically removing the email threat from our other customers’ email systems.
So, while secure email gateways have their place in the hierarchy of security controls, they just aren’t enough.
Only Cofense can see what all SEGs miss.
We stop those threats and keep our global customer base secure. To learn more about Cofense’s world-class SAT and PDR solution, please visit www.cofense.com so we can answer any questions you have.
