Why Phishing Threats Require Advanced Email Security

Business emails have become synonymous with efficient and fast communications, so much so that in 2023, there has even been a 4.3% increase in the number of emails sent and received, reaching a staggering 347.3 billion daily. Unfortunately, this tsunami of emails contains a high proportion of scam and phishing emails. Figures for Q1 2022 from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) show an upwards trend in phishing emails, with a 7% increase in credential phishing targeting enterprise users. Email security is an essential part of corporate life. Still, it requires advanced email security that uses AI-driven threat intelligence to tackle the continuous use of this successful security attack method.

What is Email Security?

Email security is an essential part of modern business life. Email security comprises a mix of anti-phishing tools that should include the following:

• Anti-phishing: stop phishing messages before they reach a user’s inbox
• Data loss prevention (DLP): to stop sensitive data from leaving the corporate network
• Anti-malware and ransomware protection: stops phishing messages that contain or could lead to malware infection.

This layered, cover-all approach to phishing will effectively stop phishing from becoming a problem for your company. In addition, by using these three layers, phishing and spam emails will be prevented from harming your organization.

By preventing phishing and spam from being delivered, you then protect your company against malware and ransomware. With reports such as Verizon’s 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report showing that phishing is a key part of the event chain leading to ransomware, email security is a vital component of any cybersecurity strategy.

"Phishing attacks have soared by 65%, from $2.79 million in 2020 to $4.6 million in 2022."

Ponemon Institute

Why the Threat of Phishing Means you Need Advanced Email Security

Phishing is an old and established means of entering a corporate network. This is typically done by using a phishing email to steal login credentials or infect a device with malware that leads to an unauthorized access event. However, as the security industry has pushed back against phishing, cybercriminals have created more sophisticated ways to avoid the detection of phishing emails. Unfortunately, this has led to an increase in phishing attacks. 

The APWG keeps tabs on the number of phishing attacks over the years and has published reports on phishing trends since 2004. Notably, the latest APWG “Year on Year review (2022)” says this:

“Q1 2022; the highest quarterly number in their reporting history and the first time they have seen phishing attacks exceed one million! It is also notable that this number is 67% higher than the same period in 2021 (611,877).”

To counter this flood of phishing attacks, an advanced email security platform is needed. Advanced email security solutions use state-of-the-art AI-based threat intelligence to detect phishing attempts.

An anti-phishing API add-in increases email security if your organization uses Microsoft Office 365.

AI-driven Threat Intelligence

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) to drive security threat detection is a vital part of the modern corporate armory. As cybercriminals use obfuscation and cloaking techniques to evade detection by traditional email gateways, AI-enabled email security tools offer a way to catch emails that use these sophisticated anti-detection tactics. AI-driven threat detection systems use curated threat intelligence feeds from millions of real-time data sources. This ensures that an inbox is protected using the most up-to-date data. High levels of accuracy mean that false-positive results are minimized, so legitimate emails are not mistakenly marked as phishing emails. Real-time, extensive corpora data-fed AI-enabled email security means that difficult-to-detect threats, such as zero-day attacks, are also prevented. Advanced email security solutions such as PhishTitan provide advanced anti-phishing and DLP to ensure that the modern enterprise can stop even the most complex phishing threats.

What is PhishTitan?

TitanHQ’s PhishTitan is an advanced email security solution that provides comprehensive, AI-enabled protection. PhishTitan uses modern threat intelligence to deliver a solution that is easy to deploy and manage while ensuring current and effective protection. Having protection that uses intelligent technologies is essential in a landscape where cybercriminals also innovate using intelligent technologies. PhishTitan applies artificial intelligence to train algorithms using multiple millions of real-time data points. This keeps the system always current and ensures that even threats not yet recognized by traditional email security, will be caught.

PhishTitan features

PhishTitan uses layers of protection to ensure that phishing is always caught. These protective layers include features covering:

• AI-driven threat intelligence: URL and web page anti-phishing analysis uses AI trained using data from a vast threat corpus to ensure comprehensive threat protection.
• Native integration with Office 365 email: this helps to make email security intrinsic and easy to use.
• Real-time threat analysis: an AI-enabled anti-phishing service follows malicious links to check the website on your behalf before releasing the email to the user’s inbox.
• Time of click protection: links in emails can be dangerous. PhishTitan replaces email links, taking the user to an inspection site to check the website associated with the link. If the website is a phishing site, the user will be prevented from entering the site.
• URL rewriting and analysis: works alongside the ‘time of click’ protection to prevent successful phishing attacks URL analysis validates the security of the URL against multiple curated anti-phishing feeds.
• Link Lock service: ensures that they remain protected even if a recipient clicks a URL in a malicious email.
• Smart Mail protection:  comparison of incoming mail with a list of known threats. Curated data from multiple sources of data across the global threat landscape ensures that the most current threats are always part of this list.
• Data loss prevention (DLP): uses known lists of keywords and phrases to prevent sensitive information from being accidentally or maliciously sent.
• Banner notifications: if a mail is identified as a risk, PhishTitan will flag this risk using a banner at the top of the email.

PhishTitan for MSPs

PhishTitan is ideal for MSP delivery and management. PhishTitan is equipped with AI-enabled malware defenses and provides enterprise-grade protection with minimized interruptions and false positives. TitanHQ specializes in designing solutions for the unique needs of an MSP. TitanHQ offers decades of technical experience and expertise with world-class customer support to provide superior email security. Our solutions are designed to protect against a wide range of email-based threats, including spear phishing, polymorphic attacks, and emerging zero-day attacks. In addition, our MSP program comes with MSP-focused pricing, marketing, and sales support. PhishTitan is a fast-to-deploy solution that will give your company an edge in delivering advanced email security at an affordable price to your clients.

Email security has entered a new era where AI will drive its success. So, when choosing an advanced email security solution, make sure that you evaluate its capability to use intelligent technologies to detect even the most recent phishing tactics.