Unfortunately, we live in a day and age when virus and malware attacks are a common occurrence. When successful, these attacks can cause several issues for a company—from loss of customer trust to financial woes resulting from business-threatening downtime and more. We all understand that security against threats is of utmost importance, but the problem is knowing where to focus an organization’s time, effort, and resources.
According to a
2016 Malware Threat Landscape report, ransomware, ad fraud malware, viruses, and phishing schemes have dominated the attack landscape in recent years, with email becoming a primary venue for threats. Specifically, a
separate ransomware report showed that the main causes of ransomware infections were phishing schemes delivered via email (46%) and a lack of employee training in the area of security (36%). Comparatively, only 12% of infections were caused by malicious websites or ads.
Aside from the basics like data encryption, frequent password changes and system updates, and more employee education, what can you do to secure email inboxes within your company against malware and virus threats? Advanced threat protection just may be the answer you’re searching for.
This service is more than a virus removal tool. It employs several strategies—including automated monitoring, behavioral analysis, sandboxing, and more—to detect advanced malware and virus attacks and those attempting to access sensitive information through persistent remote access. Advanced threat protection can typically provide protection from malware in cloud-based, on-premises, and hybrid server environments.
Specifically, advanced threat protection can help your company secure email inboxes in the following ways:
- It prevents attacks before they occur. No organization can anticipate all the possible threats on the horizon, especially because new ones are constantly being engineered and deployed. The name “advanced threat protection” perfectly describes this service, which provides zero-day, real-time defense against threats you don’t even know are present. Whereas most antivirus solutions use fingerprinting to identify malware, advanced threat protection ensures secure email through the use of sandboxing to classify something as malware based on its behavior.
- It helps you understand the types of attacks occurring in your organization. Through the use of rich reporting and URL trace capabilities, advanced threat protection can give you the data you need to protect your email environment. You can gain knowledge about which employees are being targeted and what you’re dealing with, allowing you to customize your employee training and make your company’s email system more secure. Because knowledge is power, advanced threat protection gives you the tool you’ve been missing to man your arsenal and fight back against attacks in the most effective way possible.
- It protects users from malicious hyperlinks in email messages. While it would be ideal for employees to understand they shouldn’t click on hyperlinks sent to them from people they don’t know—or messages with other obvious red flags—it’s not realistic to think that all of them will avoid phishing schemes. When you employ the right advanced threat protection solution, malicious links are automatically rewritten to be safe or the system takes users to a warning page before allowing them access to the link.
- It ensures attachments are safe. Advanced threat protection solutions find messages with known virus/malware signatures and do not allow delivery. If the signature is unknown, the message is often sent to a special environment and analyzed for malicious intent. Delivery is then allowed only if nothing suspicious is detected.
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When brainstorming ways to secure email inboxes in your organization, consider
advanced threat protection—and save yourself and your company from the consequences of persistent threats.
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