The primary defense against spam and malicious emails is anti-spam software, through which all emails must pass to be delivered to inboxes. A spam filter performs a variety of checks to ensure that the email is genuine and does not contain any threats, and if you use an advanced spam filtering service such as SpamTitan you will be well protected.
SpamTitan incorporates SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to identify and block spoofing, AI and machine learning algorithms to identify spam and malicious messages based on how they deviate from the genuine emails a business usually receives, and the solution performs checks of message headers and the message body including Bayesian analysis to identify unsolicited and malicious messages. SpamTitan also incorporates email sandboxing to identify malicious attachments based on their behavior. The Bitdefender-powered email sandbox service identifies the zero-day malware threats that antivirus controls miss. In recent independent tests, the engine that powers the SpamTitan and PhishTitan solutions scored second-highest in the tests with a phishing catch rate of 99.990%, a malware catch rate of 100%, and a false positive rate of 0.0%.
While these advanced antispam solutions can protect your business and block the majority of threats, spam filters for incoming mail will not block 100% of threats without also blocking an unacceptable number of genuine emails. That means that your corporate email filter may not catch all malicious and unwanted messages, which is why it is important not to totally rely on your enterprise spam filter for protection.
Cybercriminals are constantly developing new tactics to defeat spam filters and get their messages in inboxes where they can be opened by their intended targets. One tactic that has been increasing is callback phishing, where the emails contain no malicious links or attachments, only a phone number. The malicious actions take place over the phone, such as convincing the user to download software that provides remote access to their device. Spam filters cannot easily determine if a phone number is malicious, although the AI content detection mechanisms of SpamTitan can identify these types of threats.
Cybercriminals are increasingly leveraging legitimate third-party infrastructure for sending their spam and malicious emails, such as exploiting web forms with backend SMTP infrastructure, legitimate online services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and SharePoint for hosting malware and phishing content, and services such as Google Forms for hosting fake quizzes for capturing sensitive information. All of these methods can be difficult to identify as they use legitimate services that are generally trusted by email security solutions. Then there are other forms of phishing that no email security solution can block, as the phishing occurs on social media pages and links are sent via instant messaging services and SMS. These “smishing” attacks bypass standard technical defenses and often reach their intended targets.
The reality is that no matter how good your technical defenses are, threats will be encountered by employees. An advanced spam filter like SpamTitan will help to reduce the number of malicious and unwanted messages that arrive in inboxes but without comprehensive security awareness training, employees may respond to the malicious messages that sneak past your spam filter, are encountered via the Internet, or are sent via SMS or instant messaging services.
This is why TitanHQ strongly recommends providing regular security awareness training to the workforce to train individuals how to recognize and avoid threats such as malware and phishing and to teach cybersecurity best practices to eradicate risky behaviors. This is also an area where TitanHQ can help. TitanHQ offers a comprehensive security awareness training platform (SafeTitan) that makes it easy for businesses to create security awareness training programs for the workforce, with those campaigns tailored for different departments and roles and the different threats that each is likely to encounter.
The training courses are modular, with each element lasting no more than 10 minutes, which makes it easy to fit training into busy workflows. Through regular training, reinforced with phishing simulations conducted through the platform, businesses will be able to improve their human defenses. If malicious messages do make it past your perimeter defenses or if employees encounter threats online or elsewhere, they will have the skills to recognize and avoid those threats.
Give the TitanHQ team a call today to discuss improving your defenses through advanced spam filtering, web filtering, and security awareness training. TitanHQ solutions are available on a free trial to allow you to put them to the test before making a purchase decision, and demonstrations can be arranged on request.