Understand the Types of Email Viruses to Be on the Lookout For

Learn about the most prevalent and dangerous types of email viruses so you can better defend against them.

You’ve likely heard of email viruses and the aggravation they are notorious for causing, but are you aware that email viruses can compromise sensitive data, harm hardware and waste critical resources? User-downloaded viruses are extremely prevalent, accounting for 2,000,000 to 5,000,000 attacks per day!

Companies’ current reliability on email services has been revolutionary for cybercriminals as email has become the most common method for them to distribute their viruses, computer codes that instruct a computer to do harmful actions. This has led to the development of many types of dangerous email viruses in the wild, many of which are linked to phishing attacks and rely on user naivety to infect devices and spread to others. Others are hidden in stealthy social engineering attacks and employ advanced techniques like masquerading as a seemingly harmless file by changing their signature, making these viruses highly difficult to detect and avoid for even the most tech savvy individuals. 

Let Guardian Digital educate you on the types of email viruses you should be on the lookout for so you and your company can prevent disruptive, costly infections.

Watch: Types of Email Viruses to Be on the Lookout For

Types of Email Viruses to Be on the Lookout For

Boot Sector Viruses

These viruses spread on the master boot record, making them very difficult to remove and frequently resulting in a full system reformat.

Direct Action Viruses

When a user clicks on a file infected with a direct action virus, the attached virus is activated and continues to spread.

Resident Viruses

This type of virus infects files, installs itself on a PC and can persist even after the primary source of the virus is removed.

Multipartite Viruses

These viruses can infect the boot sector as well as files on a computer and can spread extremely rapidly and be very difficult to remove.

Keyloggers

This type of spyware enables a malicious actor to track and log the keys that the user strikes on their keyboard to capture sensitive information without the user's knowledge.

Polymorphic Viruses

This type of virus changes its signature when it reproduces, masquerading as a different and seemingly harmless file.

How Can I Secure Business Email Against Email Viruses?

Our email security solution finds and intercepts email viruses, mitigates risk and provides your organization with peace of mind.

Guardian Digital EnGarde Cloud Email Security’s technology proactively learns and distributes defenses for specific threats targeting you.

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