Top Secure Email Gateway Solutions for 2021

Email is often the channel via which ransomware and malware are unleashed upon the enterprise. Phishing scams use it to compromise networks. Executives are conned by pretend emails into sending funds to the fallacious locations – or worse, giving up their privileged credentials. Employees are duped into clicking on malicious electronic mail attachments and hyperlinks.

A current HP Wolf Security report discovered that electronic mail now accounts for 89% of all malware. The excellent news in that’s that net and browser safety are bettering. The dangerous information is that email security will not be.

That makes worker coaching a critically essential protection – see our picks for the most effective employee cybersecurity awareness training tools.

What is a Secure Email Gateway?

Another critically essential line of protection is a safe electronic mail gateway – and never surprisingly, analysts forecast double-digit progress for the safe electronic mail gateway market for years to come back.

These gateways are both units or software program that monitor emails being despatched and obtained. They spot undesirable site visitors equivalent to spam, phishing expeditions, malware, and scams.

Generally talking, safe electronic mail gateways are a specialised type of electronic mail server that filters incoming and outgoing site visitors. In some circumstances, in-depth evaluation is completed on outgoing messages to detect and block the transmission of sensitive data. Some gateways are {hardware} home equipment or servers, some are software-based or digital home equipment, and others are cloud providers.

Regardless of the mode of deployment, electronic mail gateways defend organizations in opposition to malware and ransomware by offering strong scanning layers to determine and reject emails that include malicious payloads delivered both by URLs or attachments. Heuristics and behavioral analysis are sometimes utilized to boost detection capabilities if no file signature is current. Files discovered to be containing malware are held and suspicious recordsdata might be handed to a cloud-based sandbox for full detonation.

Key Features of Secure Email Gateways

A superb electronic mail gateway will include many of the following options:

• Identify and filter spam, viruses, phishing and malware from URLs or attachments
• Scan inbound, outbound and inside emails
• Look for authentication checks equivalent to SPF, DKIM and DMARC to counter area and sender spoofing.
• Protection no matter electronic mail service platform (Microsoft 365, Exchange on-premises, Google, or hybrid)
• Provide IT and safety groups with a simple option to handle quarantine queues, rejection queues, message monitoring, and metadata to make knowledgeable selections when investigating incidents
• As ransomware can shut down operations, the gateway ought to present archiving and restoration safety in case electronic mail servers are affected

Buying Tips for Secure Email Gateways

There are a number of points to contemplate when choosing a safe electronic mail gateway. These embody:

• Whether deployment ought to be within the cloud or on-premises
• Effectiveness of any proposed product in detecting spam and malware
• Some corporations have their very own devoted threat intelligence instruments; others missing such instruments might want to take into account a safe electronic mail gateway software that features menace intelligence options
• Some merchandise focus solely on inbound site visitors; others embody each inbound and outbound
• Integration with different safety instruments is essential: Those invested in a particular platform equivalent to Azure, Google, Amazon, Dell-EMC, or Cisco, for instance, are suggested to favor merchandise that the majority intently align with these platforms.

The Best Secure Email Gateways

eSecurity Planet editors reviewed a variety of safe electronic mail gateway instruments for quite a lot of use circumstances in arriving at this checklist. Here are our picks for the safe electronic mail gateways that stood out from the pack.

Mimecast

Mimecast makes use of multi-layered detection engines to determine and neutralize threats, stopping malware, spam and focused assaults earlier than they attain the community. Administrators have granular management to determine information safety safety insurance policies globally, with the power to make adjustments simply and apply them in real-time all through the group. In addition to ransomware safety, it might defend in opposition to malware, spam, and focused assaults like CEO fraud, spear phishing electronic mail threats and advanced persistent threats.

Mimecast’s key options

• The Mimecast Email Security service is delivered as a single cloud answer with all features built-in and engineered to work collectively
• Includes a safe electronic mail gateway with information leak safety & content material management and focused menace safety, which incorporates URL, attachment, impersonation, and inside electronic mail safety
• Capabilities, equivalent to electronic mail continuity, sync & get well, giant file ship, safe messaging, and awareness training might be integrated to supply expanded safety
• Services equivalent to DMARC and Brand Exploit Protection defend in opposition to model and area fame
• 100% electronic mail uptime SLA
• Point-in-time backup and restoration of contacts, electronic mail, calendars and recordsdata
• Low influence on every day operational course of however excessive on configurability
• Fast onboarding of the service – no {hardware}, updates, upkeep
• An open API incorporates Mimecast into the broader ecosystem
• Mimecast sees over 5 billion enterprise emails on daily basis and adapts based mostly on an unlimited quantity of knowledge for menace, virus and spam intelligence

Clearswift

The Secure Email Gateway from Clearswift by AssistSystems has a set of hygiene options to guard in opposition to cyberattacks. It integrates information loss prevention performance to attenuate the chance of knowledge breaches. The Clearswift answer incorporates inbound menace safety (Avira, Sophos or Kaspersky antivirus), an non-compulsory sandbox function, information loss prevention know-how to take away threats from messages and recordsdata, a multi-layer spam defence mechanism (together with SPF, DKIM, DMARC), a number of encryption choices, and superior content material filtering options.

Clearswift’s key options

• Deep content material inspection in actual time to take away cyber menace or delicate information from an electronic mail message or attachment
• Data redaction permits the automated modification of messages and attachments, changing key phrases and phrases with asterisks “*”.  Redaction of textual content in photographs can also be obtainable via optical character recognition (OCR). In this case the redacted textual content is “black-boxed” from the picture (relatively than a separate object being overlayed) to make sure it can’t be recovered.
• Data redaction might be utilized to each incoming and outgoing emails.
• Document sanitization mechanically removes doc properties equivalent to creator, topic, standing, and so forth. and alter monitoring feedback.
• File information, equivalent to information classification labels, might be excluded from the sanitization course of.
• Ensures that hidden information can’t be exfiltrated and hidden malware can’t enter the group.
• Structural sanitization removes lively code from recordsdata equivalent to HTML, Office, PDF, and OpenOffice. These recordsdata can carry VBA, ActiveX, Javascript, and OLE objects which can be utilized to launch an assault.

Barracuda

The Barracuda Email Security Gateway manages and filters all inbound and outbound electronic mail site visitors to guard organizations from email-borne threats and information leaks. It is provided with Barracuda Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), which mixes behavioral, heuristic, and sandboxing applied sciences to guard in opposition to zero hour and focused assaults.

Barracuda’s key options

• Lets organizations encrypt messages and leverage the cloud to spool electronic mail if mail servers change into unavailable
• Available as a {hardware} equipment, digital equipment or SaaS
• ATP mechanically scans electronic mail attachments in real-time; suspicious attachments are detonated in a sandbox atmosphere to watch habits
• In addition to blocking the attachment, the outcomes are built-in into the Barracuda Real Time Intelligence System, offering safety for all different clients
• ATP and Real Time Intelligence System are up to date with the most recent menace information, together with electronic mail, community, and web-threat information
• Integrated with a web-based administration portal, permitting organizations to centrally handle all their units via a single interface
• Gateway protection is augmented by AI-based inbox protection to guard organizations in opposition to all 13 electronic mail menace varieties

Perception Point

Perception Point is a Prevention-as-a-Service firm, providing interception of any content-borne assault throughout electronic mail and extra cloud collaboration channels, equivalent to cloud storage, cloud apps, messaging platforms and API. The service prevents phishing, BEC, ATO, spam, malware, zero-days, and N-days earlier than they attain enterprise customers.

Perception Point’s key options

• The cloud-native answer identifies and intercepts any content-borne cyber-attack getting into the group via any cloud channel and is run on all recordsdata, URLs, and free textual content
• Average scan time of 10 seconds
• Low false constructive charges because of 7-layer platform, which incorporates anti-phishing engines, prevention of file-based assaults, BEC (enterprise electronic mail compromise) capabilities to forestall text-based impersonation
• Its Hardware-Assisted Platform (HAP) is a sandbox with a scanning engine
• Zero-day prevention utilizing CPU-level information
• Anti-evasion engines to uncover any try to cover or conceal malicious intent, together with algorithms and structure that enable scanning of all content material in numerous types and strategies to make sure that the malicious intent is found
• Cross-channel safety together with cloud storage, collaboration apps, in-house APIs
• The firm’s Incident Response group is designed into the service at no further cost

Proofpoint

Proofpoint stops assaults equivalent to credential phishing, BEC, electronic mail account compromise (EAC), and multi-stage malware. Its multi-layered menace detection constantly learns from threats analyzed. That’s billions of emails and 1000’s of malware samples per day and tens of millions of cloud accounts.

Proofpoint’s key options

• Proofpoint Attack Index reveals Very Attacked People (VAPs) that will help you assess and mitigate your threat
• The Proofpoint Attack Index is a weighted composite rating of threats based mostly on quantity, sort, degree of focusing on, and attacker sophistication
• Automatically removes unsafe emails from inboxes, equivalent to emails with a URL that’s weaponized after supply
• The firm earns a buyer satisfaction fee of greater than 95% and a yearly renewal fee of greater than 90%
• Customers embody greater than half of the Fortune 100, high banks, international retailers, and analysis universities
• Cloud-based platform

Avanan

Avanan, a Check Point firm, catches assaults utilizing invisible, multi-layer safety for cloud collaboration options equivalent to Office 365, G-Suite, and Slack.

Avanan’s key options

• The platform deploys in a single click on by way of API to forestall BEC and block phishing, malware, information leakage, account takeover, and shadow IT throughout the enterprise
• Replaces the necessity for a number of instruments to safe a cloud collaboration suite
• Multi-vendor, open platform answer with custom-made safety from preconfigured elements chosen from safety suppliers
• In-line scanning
• Learns from assaults different applied sciences miss
• Blocks assaults that evade conventional scans earlier than they attain the inbox
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) learns from relationships between workers, historic emails, and communication patterns to construct a customized menace profile that blocks assaults particular to every group
• No change to MX data implies that it’s not possible for hackers to see if a corporation is utilizing Avanan to safe their cloud
• Maps the consumer, file, and permission situations of every cloud right into a single menace administration interface

Fortinet

FortiMail delivers multi-layered safety in opposition to the spectrum of email-borne threats. Powered by FortiGuard Labs menace intelligence and built-in into the Fortinet Security Fabric, FortiMail helps organizations forestall, detect, and reply to email-based threats, together with spam, phishing, malware, zero-day threats, impersonation, and Business Email Compromise (BEC) assaults.

Fortinet’s key options

• Anti-spam and anti-malware complemented by strategies like outbreak safety, content material disarming and reconstruction, sandbox evaluation, impersonation detection to cease undesirable bulk electronic mail, phishing, ransomware, enterprise electronic mail compromise, and focused assaults
• FortiMail earned a AAA score from SE Labs and a 99.78% Spam Capture Rate from Virus Bulletin
• Integration with Fortinet merchandise in addition to third-party elements
• Complementary electronic mail safety safety for Microsoft 365 environments via API-level integration
• Checks embody IP, area, sender, SPF, DKIM, DMARC and geographical restrictions
• Identify and block 99.7% of spam in real-world situations
• Integrated information loss prevention and electronic mail encryption

TitanHQ

TitanHQ’s SpamTitan and WebTitan handle electronic mail and DNS filtering for the SMB and MSP market. They supply a number of integration choices by way of APIs, coverage controls, a reporting suite, and net safety.

TitanHQ’s key options

• Identifies greater than 100,000 new malware websites on daily basis by way of a menace intelligence database of 650 million customers
• Used by greater than 12,000 companies and a couple of,750 MSPs
• Blocks malware, ransomware, viruses, and phishing
• Real time menace updating
• Blocks 99.9% of malware and spam
• Sandboxing safety
• Can archive and search emails quickly
• Legally compliant with Sarbanes Oxley, HIPPA, GDPR, and different regulatory standards

Further studying: How to Set Up and Implement DMARC Email Security