There is increasing pressure for IT and security teams to consolidate their technology stack to reduce the complexity of their security environments, strengthen their overall security posture and simplify the deployment and management of security tech.
The changing needs and transformation of email security are a growing priority for many organisations, and they are now looking at the ways they can improve and consolidate their email security in the next 12 months.
Significant growth in the volume and success of email attacks, and migration to cloud email, are driving IT and security teams to re-evaluate their email security controls to ensure they are equipped to protect against the changing threat landscape.
The need for transformation is driven by three key factors:
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- The move to cloud-delivered email – 90% of organisations are currently using a cloud-delivered email platform in some capacity, with 84% utilising Microsoft Office 365.
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- The growing email threat landscape – The email threat landscape has accelerated to unprecedented levels, leading to the need for additional security controls capable of keeping up with emerging threats.
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- Gaps in native security controls – 71% report gaps in native cloud-delivered security controls and therefore use additional third-party controls to close the gaps.
Consolidating to an integrated security platform
Traditionally, as email attacks have become more sophisticated and targeted, security architects have created a “custom” email security stack from multiple vendors to protect against the changing threat landscape. While this may help protect the organisation from attack, it is costly, complex and difficult to effectively manage.
Security architects are now looking at holistic and integrated email security platforms that can remove the complexity of their email security environments by consolidating to one solution that manages all of their email security needs.
Consolidation to an integrated email security platform enables IT and security teams to focus their time on core business objectives such as resilience, performance, risk reduction and their security strategy. MTI can help you source the right solution for your organisation.
What to look for when consolidating your email security
There is an abundance of email security vendors available on the market today, but few offer a truly holistic and integrated approach. Organisations should consider what their current email security stack protects against and whether there are any gaps they need to fill.
We’ve put together some recommendations on what is needed:
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- Integrated, adaptive controls – Modern email security platforms must combine and integrate a broad collection of email security controls to protect against the varied email threat landscape. This should include, pre-delivery filtering, east/west, post-delivery controls and remediation, domain spoofing support together with web security and filtering controls.
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- Turnkey solutions – Fully integrated email security platforms must support hybrid email management with ease and automatically align policies across systems.
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- Threat intelligence – Threat intelligence must be the underlying basis of the platform and should support all aspects of automated protection and remediation as well as broader security ecosystem integration.
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- Integration and extensibility – Open APIs and off-the-shelf integrations enable full security stack integration, including with SIEMs, SOARs, endpoints, firewalls, and other third-party security controls and services.
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- Integrated security services – To add integrated brand exploit protection services that can monitor for similar domains and fake, copycat sites and shut them down to prevent malicious use of respected brands.
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- Unified email and web security – With so many email attacks, web security must be tightly integrated with email security controls to strengthen the overall security posture.
Security teams are demanding consolidation, to reduce complexity without losing efficacy and the move to the cloud is the ideal time to action this. When delivered as a fully integrated platform, email security can help organisations achieve better threat detection and prevention, better governance and cost savings.
Is your current email security keeping your organisation safe?
The majority of organisations believe they have adequate email security measures in place, but unfortunately many fall short and leave organisations vulnerable to compromise.
MTI has observed first hand that not all email security systems perform equally well. Request your free Email Security Risk Assessment to assess the effectiveness of your email security system.