Intelligent email protection, sometimes called human-layer security, is a class of software solutions designed to prevent a company’s employees from sophisticated email-focused cyberattacks. These tools use machine learning to analyze historical records of email content, user behavior, and email-based threats, identifying risks and developing a baseline for user behavior. Intelligent email protection products filter incoming emails to detect and block potential phishing attacks, attachments containing malware, and links to potentially dangerous websites. They also filter outbound emails to detect accidental data leakage, data exfiltration, and the misuse of privileged data.
Companies use these solutions because all employees are susceptible to traditional phishing attacks, targeted spear-phishing attacks, malware, and other email-based threats. Employees can also pose a risk if they unknowingly share sensitive information in noncompliant ways. Additionally, every business is at risk for insider threats, and these products will detect abnormal activity involving sensitive data.
Some intelligent email protection tools fall into the same category as secure email gateway and cloud email security, which are also used to prevent phishing attacks and malicious emails from reaching employees. Those solutions, though, do not provide the scope of intelligent automation capabilities needed to identify anomalies and detect risky behaviors. Some overlap also exists with email anti-spam solutions, which have an even smaller scope of capabilities limited to blocking spam and phishing attacks.
To qualify for inclusion in the Intelligent Email Protection category, a product must:
Filter incoming and outgoing emails
Utilize machine learning to develop employee baseline behaviors
Detect and block unauthorized outbound emails and incoming emails containing advanced persistent threats
