What are the different types of email security?

types of email security

Email security solutions are an important part of an organization’s cybersecurity. Since email is one of the greatest sources of risk to businesses today, it’s worth knowing which types of email security are ideal to use for your organization’s needs.

Phishing emails are one of the common threats that affect both individuals and organizations. Some cause malware, data breaches, and account takeovers. With the right type of email security, you can secure access to your accounts and their contents, ensuring business continuity and the prevention of data loss. 

Some key features of email security solutions include:

Spam Filters

Spam filters identify incoming threats in your inbox. Each email must pass rules or algorithms to be marked safe. The score determines the email’s probability of being spam and will be flagged as spam once it crosses a certain amount of threshold. Although spam can contain harmless promotional emails, they can become cluttered in your inbox, making it difficult to find valuable emails. Some spam emails contain clickbait content that could be part of phishing attacks, so be careful when opening these messages— it’s best not to click on links or open attachments.

Anti-virus Protection

Malicious links left in spam inboxes can still be a threat. If the user clicks on a download link or button, it may install malware into the device and spread throughout the network. Anti-virus protection serves as another layer of defense by scanning incoming and outgoing e-mails and will quarantine or block emails with harmful content. 

Anti-Phishing Protection

Anti-phishing protection refers to security measures that we can take to prevent phishing attacks. Some security features for anti-phishing include blocking links and attachments, especially those that come with potentially harmful emails. Other email security features include anti-phishing awareness training to help educate people to recognize phishing attacks before they become a victim.

Data Encryption

Email data is generally transmitted in a format that cybercriminals can intercept during transit. Data encryption is a security feature that turns email data into incomprehensible text that requires a secret key to be decoded. It protects confidential email content from getting exposed. This means that if an email is meant for your email address only, no one else can read the contents of the email even if it has been intercepted by another email address.