What Is an Email Filtering Service & How Does It Work to Secure Email?

What Is an Email Filtering Service & How Does It Work to Secure Email?

Email filtering services filtering an organization’s inbound and outbound email traffic. Inbound email filtering scans inbound messages and classifies them into different categories including spam, malware, virus and suspicious links, among others. Email filtering services use various technologies and techniques to filter email including malicious URL filtering, dynamic file analysis and heuristics. All mail deemed fraudulent or malicious is quarantined and never reaches the end user, and only safe, legitimate mail is delivered.

Outbound email filtering uses the same process, but instead scans outbound emails before delivering any potentially harmful messages to other parties. Organizations can deploy an email filtering service as part of a cloud-based email security solution, or as an on-premises appliance, depending on their requirements.

That being said, there are significant benefits associated with implementing an email filtering service as part of a comprehensive cloud-based email security solution, including flexibility and scalability, enhanced security through defense in depth, and the expert, ongoing system management and support required to keep all potential threats out of the inbox.

What Threats Does an Email Filtering Service Protect Against?

Some of the dangerous and disruptive threats email users face daily that a spam filtering service can help keep out of the inbox include:

• Spam email - or unsolicited junk email sent in bulk -  is notorious for the aggravation, distraction and disruption that it causes. However, spam is also a serious security threat to organizations, as it often contains malicious phishing scams and dangerous ransomware, which can result in significant downtime, the compromise of sensitive data and severe reputational harm.
• Email viruses: which account for the majority of computer viruses, consist of malicious code that is distributed in email messages, and can be activated when a user clicks on a link in an email message, downloads an email attachment or interacts in some other way with the body of an infected email. Email viruses are extremely prevalent and can compromise sensitive information, destroy data, harm hardware and waste copious amounts of time, resources and energy.
• Phishing is a type of digital attack in which threat actors send malicious emails designed to trick users into revealing financial information, credentials or other sensitive data. Phishing is currently the leading cybersecurity threat businesses face, accounting for over 90% of all cyberattacks.
• Malware encompasses all software that is designed to disrupt, damage or gain unauthorized access to a computer system. Malware can perform various harmful functions including encrypting or deleting sensitive data, stealing, hijacking or altering central computing functions and monitoring users’ activity without their permission.
• zero-day attack refers to a scenario in which threat actors exploit a vulnerability before developers have had the opportunity to release a fix for it. Zero-day attacks are especially dangerous because the only people who know about them are the attackers themselves. Once a malicious actor has infiltrated a network, they can either attack immediately or sit and wait for the optimal time to do so.
• CEO fraud - also known as business email compromise (BEC) or whaling - is an email scam in which a threat group targets or impersonates a C-level executive within an organization who has access to financial information or other sensitive data. The aim of this malicious scam is to trick an employee into sharing valuable data or conducting a fraudulent wire transfer.

Fortify Your Email Infrastructure Against Malicious Mail with a Powerful, Multi-Layered Email Filtering Service.

Guardian Digital’s powerful, multi-layered email filtering service for businesses helps eliminate malicious or unwanted mail from your network and email gateway by identifying and blocking all suspicious emails before they reach your system, safeguarding your users and key business assets.

Guardian Digital’s email filtering service offered as part of Guardian Digital’s comprehensive EnGarde Cloud Email Security suite not only safeguards your network from the most advanced known security risks, but also leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) to anticipate and block emerging threats in real-time, and update its security controls to prevent future attacks.

Guardian Digital EnGarde Cloud Email Security leverages sophisticated, multi-layered detection engines to protect your organization from spam, phishing, viruses, malware, zero-day attacks and other advanced threats. With Guardian Digital’s SaaS cloud-based email filtering service, you can:

• Eliminate 100% of spam email, viruses and malware, with a false positive rate of less than 0.0001%
• Protect against advanced spear phishing and zero-day attacks 
• Secure sensitive information and prevent fraud with end-to-end encryption and multiple email authentication protocols including SPF, DKIM and DMARC
• Protect against attacks leveraging malicious links and attachments with dynamic URL and file analysis
• Enhance employee productivity by keeping all fraudulent and malicious mail out of the inbox and ensuring that only safe, legitimate mail is delivered
• Reduce strain on your IT department and bolster IT security with a fully supported solution offering expert, ongoing system monitoring and maintenance
• Gain complete visibility into the threats targeting your organization and the security of your email infrastructure with an accessible, real-time Dashboard administrative portal

Interested in learning more about how you can protect against malicious and unwanted email with Guardian Digital’s email filtering service?

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