What is Email Protection?
Email protection is a broad concept that comprises many techniques — all built around the safeguarding of digital communications within organizations.
This includes traditional security measures such as spyware detection, login security, and email encryption — as well as data retention, e-discovery assurance, cloud or on-prem email archival systems, and disaster recovery and backup.
Email security
One branch of email protection is the set of methods used to stop unauthorized access or compromise of email security systems. This includes:
Login security: There are a number of methods for safeguarding email account access — from employee education on best practices, to routine password cycling by administrators.
Spam filtering: Automated message filtering can prevent malicious and fraudulent emails from ever reaching employees’ inboxes. For example, cyber criminals use phishing methods to retrieve sensitive information from unsuspecting users, by pretending to be employees within the organization, or by embedding seemingly innocent links into emails. Spam filtering and automated spear phishing prevention technology can help to identify and quarantine suspicious content so administrators can determine its risk.
User security: Email filtering tools can’t catch email attacks that bypass the filters to reach users via their personal email, voicemail, or SMS. There are a number of training services that can help educate employees on security awareness, by simulating real network and email intrusions.
Email encryption:
Email encryption is critical for protecting the contents of email from unauthorized access, both in archives and as it is accessed and read.
Employee education: In addition to implementing the right technologies, organizations must ensure that employees are trained in best practices for the safeguarding of sensitive data.
Email backup and archival
While security is essential in the protection of email, it’s also important to pay attention to the archival process — used to ensure the longevity and integrity of the underlying data. Even when it’s no longer at risk of being compromised by a cyber attack, email still needs to be stored securely, and be retrievable, for legal and business reasons.
There are many business and organizational reasons for archiving email communications. Email often serves as critical, if informal, documentation of why and how certain decisions were made — and as an archive of relevant information. As a result, most employees benefit from a robust, complete, and easy to search archive of their communications. Techniques involved in email preservation include: