The best starting point for a business ’ email security , according to Viljoen , is to invest in an email gateway solution .
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a human alone to be able to administer and catch these threats .”
IBM ’ s recently launched Cost of a Data Breach Report corroborates this statement , affirming that AI and automation have had the biggest impact on speed of breach identification and containment for studied organisations . The report says that businesses making extensive use of both AI and automation experienced a data breach life cycle 108 days shorter than those companies that had not deployed these technologies ( 214 days versus 322 days ).
According to the 2023 report , the incident costs shouldered by those organisations that were using AI and automation were significantly lower ; on average , nearly US $ 1.8 million lower data breach costs than organisations that didn ’ t deploy these .
How to protect business email
The best starting point for a business ’ email security , according to Viljoen , is to invest in an email gateway solution .
“ In fact , Datacentrix ’ s recommendation is that organisations implement an email gateway solution as a first priority before looking at any other security product .”
With a variety of toolsets available on the market , finding the best fit for your organisation is key , Viljoen clarifies . “ There are full enterprise solutions , as well as small-to-medium business email offerings available to provide a secure email environment . These solutions offer reactive , real-time and proactive response solutions to secure the gateway .”
They also encompass a variety of functionalities that address the various aspects of an email gateway , namely :
• Spam filtering and blocking
• Stationery ( email signatures and campaigns )
• Anti-phishing ( known bad threat actors )
• Sandboxing (‘ detonation ’ of suspicious emails found )
• Zero Day protection ( behavioural or unknown / untrusted email domain )
• Data leak prevention ( internal and external sharing of sensitive information )
• Email blocking ( verification , blacklisting , whitelisting )
• User awareness training and campaigns ( helping users to keep up with phishing techniques and how to defend against those )
Ensuring that the gateway is configured and maintained from the start is critical , with the requirement that a specialist – either an internal engineer or an expert managed services provider – enforces the policies and rules and maintains best practice standards .
“ Once you have the right technology in place and capabilities are procured and enabled within the organisation , the next step is to see that the policies and rule sets are updated , checked and verified in a cost-effective way to ensure losses are minimised . Running best practice
The best starting point for a business ’ email security , according to Viljoen , is to invest in an email gateway solution .
assessments on policies and rules on a frequent basis is also vital to ensure a secure gateway .
“ Finally , it is critical to utilise tools , such as pen testing and auditing , to ensure that the environment is hardened and stringently tested at frequent intervals .” u
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