In our updates for partners last month, we offered insights into some of the work that is ongoing behind the scenes within the MailGuard Engineering and SecOps teams to continue hardening your email defences.
One piece of work that we referred to was continued enhancements to MailGuard’s Encryption Policy.
By default, SMTP, the protocol used to send emails, lacks encryption, making email communication vulnerable to various security threats. In many instances, emails are sent without any protection or rely on weak encryption protocols. This leaves email messages exposed to potential man-in-the-middle attacks and eavesdropping by malicious actors during transmission.
At MailGuard, we prioritize your email security. We employ opportunistic TLS, a critical feature that ensures the secure transmission of your emails. This means that MailGuard always initiates email connections using the most secure version of TLS available. If both the sending and receiving servers support it, they establish a connection with the highest level of encryption. If not, the system will automatically negotiate and choose the strongest TLS cipher that both parties can agree upon, guaranteeing the utmost protection for your email communications
Email delivery over secure encrypted channels is essential for safeguarding sensitive data, which is why MailGuard has now added further enhancements to its Encryption Policy so you stay in control. It’s a customisable policy that allows partners and administrators to detect and block emails delivered through legacy encryption protocols like TLSv1.0 and TLSv1.1, identifying and addressing encryption weaknesses, so you can significantly strengthen your security framework.
Read more here about ‘How to configure an Encryption policy (TLS)’:
Another recent update relates to advancements to MailGuard’s email authentication policies. Email authentication, or email validation as it is otherwise referred to, is crucial to ensure that emails are sent from legitimate sources. It’s especially vital for thwarting phishing attacks.
MailGuard Head of Engineering, Prathik Chandrashekar, says:
“The new Authentication Policy is a game-changer. It provides partners and administrators with the capability to identify and block emails based on failed email authentication, such as SPF or DKIM failures. With this policy in place, you can proactively defend against email spoofing and phishing attempts.”
Read more here about configuring an SPF/DKIM policy (Authentication policy type):
Additionally, we referred to upgrades to MailGuard’s Spear Phishing Policy.
Spear phishing attacks are growing in sophistication. A step beyond normal phishing attacks, spear phishing attacks target a specific person or group, using social engineering to research the victim and to optimise the attack, often employing spoofed emails and tailoring content with current events, documents or web content that is more familiar to the victim. An especially insidious form of email scam, MailGuard is rising to the challenge with upgrades to its bespoke Spear Phishing Policy.
The enhancements enable the system to detect and combat evolving evasion methods, such as the use of multiple character sets and special characters, more effectively. By continuously improving our defences and by using fuzzing matching techniques, MailGuard is better equipped to protect your organization from advanced and cunning threats.
Read more here about how to configure and manage Spear Phishing policies:
Stay tuned for further updates about how MailGuard is iteratively enhancing your email security to stay ahead of bad actors. Our commitment to you and our partner community is unwavering.
Keeping Businesses Safe and Secure
Prevention is always better than a cure, and one of the best defences is to encourage businesses to proactively boost their company’s cyber resilience levels to avoid threats landing in inboxes in the first place. The fact that a staggering 94% of malware attacks are delivered by email, makes email an extremely important vector for businesses to fortify.
No one vendor can stop all email threats, so it’s crucial to remind customers that if they are using Microsoft 365, they should also have a third-party email security specialist in place to mitigate their risk. For example, using a third-party cloud email solution like MailGuard.
MailGuard provides a range of solutions to keep businesses safe, from email filtering to email continuity and archiving solutions. Speak to your customers today to ensure they’re prepared, and get in touch with our team to discuss strengthening your customer’s Microsoft 365 security.
Talk to us
MailGuard's partner blog is a forum to share information; we want it to be a dialogue. Reach out to us and tell us what your customers need so we can serve you better. You can connect with us on social media or call us and speak to one of our consultants.
Australian partners, please call us on 1300 30 65 10
US partners call 1888 848 2822
UK partners call 0 800 404 8993
