Assessing the ROI of Your Email Security Solution

Email continues to be the preferred attack vector for cybercriminals looking to exploit enterprises. over 90% of attacks begin with phishing attacks or other email-borne attacks, making it clear that a robust email security solution is a necessity for every organization.

Cybercriminals know all they need to know about their return on investment (ROI): cyberattacks are pretty cheap and highly profitable. Unfortunately, it’s not cheap to protect your company against cyberattacks, and despite historical data and forward-looking risk assessments, it’s still difficult to establish the cost/benefit ratio of cyber defenses. This article will discuss the importance of measuring ROI for email security, what factors go into making this decision, and the benefits of investing in email security.

The Benefits of Email Security

Businesses of any size can suffer from a successful phishing attack, putting them at risk of serious downtime, reputation damage, and financial loss if they don't have a security plan in place. Email security is designed to protect organizations from cyber threats via email. Phishing emails can trick users into downloading malware, compromising sensitive information, and even approving fake bills. 

Email security is a boardroom issue because of the increasing risk exposure and the growing number of high-profile cyber attacks, which have highlighted the importance of cybersecurity and data privacy in the C-suite. As a result, cybersecurity has become a top-of-mind issue for many organizations, and boardrooms are becoming more sensitive to their responsibilities for overseeing the growth and risk factors surrounding data privacy and cybersecurity.

Email security is particularly important for small businesses as many companies send sensitive information through email accounts, and the loss of confidential data can have severe consequences. This data can cause financial loss as well as image and data damage if it is misused. Many small businesses overlook the importance of email security, lack the resources or time to manage security technicalities, and are often forced to take the chance and give up basic security measures.

Today, businesses can't afford to compromise their email security as it's much more difficult to protect a diverse environment and workforce. The complexity of this evolving landscape leads to needing more diverse solutions that are better able to use modern methods for protection. Sophisticated, stealthy mechanisms such as zero-day attacks and fileless malware, make it possible for hackers to position themselves to exploit new trends, leaving traditional security technology vulnerable. Small and large businesses would benefit from having a multi-layered, proactive email security system that can protect them against threats.

Our solution is fully-managed, which means you don't need to maintain any equipment on your site. This also simplifies your security by having only one provider for support. The security team at Guardian Digital keeps your email defense up-to-date, so you don't need to spend time worrying about it. The support engineers also monitor your system's health to ensure that it's working effectively and providing the best protection possible. In simpler terms, Guardian Digital's email security solution with its dashboard makes your email security easier to manage, saves you time, and provides effective protection for your emails.

The Dashboard offers valuable, real-time information about the security of your email. This is achieved by helping you to identify threats to your business and individuals most likely to be affected, allowing you to make better cybersecurity decisions without having to invest additional money. The dashboard features integrated reporting that simplifies administration, increases operational efficiency, reduces overhead for all companies, regardless of size, and is user-friendly.

Ongoing expert system management that limits your exposure risk and eases pressure on your business’s limited resources - simplifying administration, enhancing security, and reducing costs.

Inaction Leads to Significant Loss

There's no doubt that email security is an investment. Cybercrime was once seen as a hobby, but is now serious business. Malicious actors continue to evolve their tactics, such as using AI to generate more sophisticated phishing emails, indistinguishable from real ones, or links that include malware which can cause major problems if your employees open them.

Not investing in email security fails to take into account external factors that can eventually lead to:

• Theft of sensitive data: where identity fraud is often an additional problem
• Reputation damage: due to the loss of trust of your customers
• Loss of profit: lost sales opportunities and disrupted operational activities

Breach costs have increased nearly 13% over the last two years, suggesting these incidents could also contribute to the rising prices of other products and inflation. 60% of organizations studied raised their product or services because of a data breach. 

IC3 discovered that social engineering scams are not just the most prevalent but also the most expensive: In their last study, BEC attacks cost U.S. companies an average loss of around 2.34 billion dollars. According to APWG the average BEC wire transfer request was $93,881. To add insult to injury, a report by IBM found that 83% of organizations have experienced more than one breach in their lifetime. Half of the costs at the expense of a breach occur more than a year after the breach occurs.

Security leaders are under pressure to make more innovative investments that provide tangible business value. Our solution can save your business money and time with a fast and straightforward deployment that displaces other technologies and integrates with cloud email solutions like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

Companies should focus on solutions that reduce overhead and provide security teams the space to protect as opposed to reacting. Cloud-based email security management platforms can help CISOs improve their productivity, and simplify email management using only one interface. This reduces the need to log into multiple interfaces, increases efficiency, and simplifies email management to make it easier to respond to potential threats. Cloud email security management allows CISOs to quickly identify and solve issues so that CISOs can focus on more pressing security issues by automating repetitive tasks such as email filtering and threat detection.

The Impact and Importance of ROI

Using a tool to calculate ROI can help security decision-makers simplify the process. Some of the impacts of ROI calculation specifically for email security solutions include:

Point Solutions vs. Holistic Solutions

Organizations need to understand the difference between point solutions and holistic solutions when it comes to email security. Calculating ROI forces an organization to take into consideration the features of a solution, as well as the scope of the product’s protection. While point solutions might be focused on specific attacks like BEC or phishing, holistic solutions cover all types of attack beyond simple spam and virus filtering to protect against advanced threats that may need to have more consideration. It may be difficult to justify the costs of multiple point solutions compared to one holistic solution if it adequately protects against all threats.

A holistic email security solution provides more encompassing protection for all types of threats by addressing different pain points with a single, versatile solution. These solutions use multilayered content analysis, reputation analysis, and sandboxing to detect and block advanced malware, malicious URLs or attachments, ransomware, and polymorphic malware. A secure URL defense, such as Guardian Digital URL Protect, can help to create a safe environment for users. This reduces the possibility of employees downloading malware, ransomware, or other executable data.

Justifying the POC Process

A Proof of Concept (POC) is an evaluation of a vendor's solution, and a great way to determine if it meets its expectations. However, it can be difficult for security decision-makers to justify the time and effort required to execute a POC. Organizations need to select the best solutions to evaluate. The ROI calculation can be used to quantify the differences between different options before you commit to a POC. 

The first step is to define the scope of the project and then make sure you have the right team to ensure that it's successful. Guardian Digital is committed to the process and meeting your requirements to create a plan that is effective. Our expert guidance will provide you with the necessary insights to make an informed decision on whether or not the POC warrants additional money, time and resources based on technical implementation at the desired scale and performance.

Cost Calculations

The bottom line cost is possibly the most important factor for a CISO as it includes factors such as the vendor fee, deployment cost and ongoing resource costs. This can help security leaders to understand the true cost to a solution before making a decision.

Why You Should Invest in Email Security

When a CISO considers the importance of email Security for their company, there are two main concerns: minimizing security risks that could cause major damage to their organization and finding a solution that fits within their budget. It is difficult to find a balance between these two without relying only on intuition or sales pitches. Multiple products can be difficult to test due to the lack of IT and security personnel resources. An interactive tool can be used to aid in your decision making, such as a Return on Investment (ROI), calculator. This will simplify the process. 

Security decision-makers can streamline the purchasing process by using a tool that calculates ROI. Security professionals can assess the potential value of an email security solution and make informed decisions about which tools to choose with insight. Some ways ROI calculations can help with the buying process include:

• The importance and value of security initiatives can be quantified
• Illustration of how security projects are connected to the larger strategic goals of an organization
• Credibility to lend credibility for an informed selection process
• Optimizing vendor selections and pricing

According to a report done by IBM the average cost of a data breach is significantly higher than the previous year and shows that the price of these attacks are increasing. Most of the cost is divided between detecting and escalating a breach and the loss of business. The study also showed a growing gap in the cost of a breach among organizations with better security systems, meaning that even though the costs of a breach are lower for organizations with a formal security infrastructure, it can cause irreparable harm to organizations without this protection.

Keep Learning About Email Security ROI

Email is one of the leading channels cyber attackers use, and the need to protect from threats coming through continues to grow. Calculating ROI is critical to help you identify the best options for your organization.

• Prepare your business for cyberattacks to make sure employees stay safe online.
• Improve your email security posture by following best practices to protect against attacks and breaches.
• Keeping the integrity of your email safe requires securing the cloud with spam filtering and enterprise-grade anti-spam services.
• Learn more about the consequences of modern phishing attacks in our Phishing eBook.