How to Implement an Effective Anti-Email-Threats Strategy

Email borne threats have a tendency to harm your business. Either a ransomware or an Email Fraud, you're likely facing daily attacks to your Email Ecosystem.

Over 70% of worldwide traffic is spam. But because everyone’s email inboxes use filters to some degree, spam is easily detected and automatically removed before users even notice. Still, email remains the first distribution method of ransomware. And in 2021, 37% of all businesses and organizations were hit by ransomware. It means the number of organizations impacted by ransomware has more than doubled since the previous year.

One email is enough to jeopardize your entire company’s future. One company paid a whopping $40 million ransom, the biggest paid ransom to date. To mitigate the risk of becoming a victim of ransomware, organizations explore ways to prevent suspicious emails that may contain ransomware from reaching their inboxes. Different anti-spam filters can be installed at varying levels of IT systems. But what should you look for in anti-spam solutions to ensure they are effective to protect you from ever-evolving threats?

Here’s how to implement an effective anti-spam strategy.

Define your anti-spam strategy

Your Internet Service Provider, email server, firewall, and antivirus software will offer some email filtering components. Ultimately, you are responsible for your data and email’s security. Rather than relying on your employees to learn about cybersecurity practices through potentially costly mistakes, train them so you can mitigate the risks of an attack. Only 31% of employees are trained on email threats and ransomware. In 2020, 30% of ransomware was executed due to a "wrong click" by employees targeted by a phishing email. Considering the average ransom request for small companies is $5,900, it’s far cheaper to train employees than pay out a ransom each time you are attacked.

Choose an effective anti-spam filter

Content filtering based on keywords is not enough anymore. Your anti-spam solution must scan all attached files and hyperlinks in all emails. If you use Microsoft365 Business Basic and Standard package or Google WorkSpace Basic, it may surprise you that the service does not include filtering of email attachments and URLs. You would need to get their Advanced Premium package to get this service.

Only paid anti-spam solutions are effective against the latest generation of attacks via email. Our Email Security Service is updated every hour unless a Day-Zero threat is detected by one of our filtering engines. And when this happens, an update is sent to all clients immediately.

Take a multi-layer approach

With cybersecurity, a multi-layer approach has proven to be most effective. It’s not enough to rely on one antivirus solution or spam filtering tool. For robust security, leverage multiple email filtering layers.

Companies such as Google automatically remove hyperlinks from emails that they believe contain phishing attempts, leaving you with no ability to check it yourself or retrieve the information. With Microsoft, it simply deletes the suspicious email without even informing you. Fortunately, these are not your only options. 

Our Cloud Email Security Gateway quarantines all emails that fail at passing one or several of our filters. These suspicious emails can be released from quarantine by IT administrators (or IT partners) or configured for each user. Even better, administrators can personalize the quarantine measures and any other filter.

It only takes one click to compromise an entire network and company. Contact us today to learn more about developing and implementing an effective anti-spam strategy. Our email security solutions can help protect your entire email ecosystem against the latest and most advanced email threats.