What is URL defense & Why you need one?


With the rise in email attacks leveraging malicious URLs, implementing effective malicious URL protection is becoming an increasingly important aspect of businesses' cyber security strategy.

What is url defense

What is URL Defense and How Does It Work?

URL Defense is a technique used to identify malicious links in emails and prevent these emails from being delivered. While many email security providers rely on URL rewriting to detect malicious links, this strategy can provide users with a false sense of security - often doing more harm than good. Guardian Digital takes a different approach to protecting against malicious URLs - by comparing domains and hosts against common blocklists and scanning destination websites in real-time to determine if they are malicious or safe, Guardian Digital EnGarde Cloud Email Security reliably detects and blocks all emails containing malicious links. Each email that passes through EnGarde's multi-layered security platform is also evaluated for credential content to detect fraudulent, zero-day credential-phishing sites. If a link is unsafe, the email in which it appears never reaches the recipient. 

Why Your Business Needs URL Defense

Implementing URL effective URL Defense helps create a safeguarded environment around the user - mitigating the risk of an employee submitting a password or downloading malicious spyware, ransomware or other malicious executable software on your systems.

With HTML email, users can view the destination of a link before clicking (by hovering over it), but if you are doing so, you are probably not in the 10% who would click on a malicious link. Research reveals that 1 in 10 employees will click on a malicious link - and just one wrong click has the potential to shake an organization to its core with data theft, financial loss, reputation damage and significant downtime.

Be Aware that URL Rewriting Can Provide a False Sense of Security

Know that URL rewriting can actually have the side effect of increasing the likelihood of users clicking on malicious links. Many users may be under the impression that any ‘Safe’ link is indeed safe - although this is often not the case. 

Malicious URL protection technology is most effective when implemented as part of a comprehensive, defense-in-depth approach to email security. We strongly recommend that users select a multi-layered cloud email security solution that seamlessly integrates with the cloud platform they are using, providing critical additional layers of defenses. Look for a solution that incorporates advanced, real-time malicious URL protection techniques -  greatly reducing the risk of human error and safeguarding cloud email accounts against the most targeted and sophisticated threats.

Read an in-depth article on: Email Security: Complete Guide to Email Security & Types of Email Threats

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