Email security refers to the collective measures used to secure the access and content of an email account or service. It allows an individual or organization to protect the overall access to one or more email addresses/accounts.
Email security uses technology to inspect incoming emails for malicious threats and encrypt–or secure–outbound email traffic to protect mailboxes, data, users, and organizations from cybersecurity attacks and schemes. Cloud email security is increasingly important as more and more companies migrate to a cloud or hybrid email platform. Cisco Email Security’s layered defenses can provide comprehensive protection that incorporates email security best practices .
While many cybersecurity professionals are aware of common email security threats like phishing, ransomware, business email compromise, and other inbound threats, it’s important to also consider data protection and securing outbound traffic. That is, putting measures in place to prevent users from sending sensitive data via email to external parties.
The Need for Email Security
Both Individual and business users rely on emails as their effective source of communication. However, users are not sure if the emails sent and received are secure from the prying hackers. Emails when left unprotected can be accessed by unauthorized accounts and can infest the emails with malicious mails and can be quite destructive. Hackers send genuine looking malicious emails and trick users to open the attachment or link that comes along. By doing so users get redirected to malicious websites which certainly compromises the users’ system and devices and leads to data breaches.