How to protect yourself automatically from emails that become malicious after delivery

May 27, 2024

Cybercriminals are constantly innovating to infiltrate organizations' systems and steal valuable data. They achieve this by, among other things, using a complex multi-stage method, commonly known as an "attack chain".

Every day we encounter new threats and many of these are not necessarily malicious at the time of email delivery. A clean website can become malicious after delivery of an email with the URL/link to that website.

How does an email attack chain develop?

An attack chain is a sequence of actions performed by cybercriminals to infiltrate their victims' systems. Email is one of the most common means of initiating an attack chain, as it allows malicious messages to be sent on a large scale and users to be tricked into clicking on infected links or files.

Let's look at an example:

A cybercriminal sends an email to an employee of the organization containing a legitimate URL.
The email passes the analysis of the email protection tool. As the URL is legitimate, the email arrives in the employee's mailbox.
A while later, the cybercriminal modifies the content of the web page to which the URL points by inserting malware into it.
Since the employee already has the revised email in his mailbox if there is no email.

A proactive and forward-thinking email security solution such as Clean Email, which can detect, analyze, and remediate email threats even after they have been delivered, is needed to protect companies from these types of attacks.

Automatic removal of malicious messages with Clean Email

Clean Email provides an automated response and remediation model that enables the removal of malicious messages that have already been delivered to a user's inbox.

This reduces risk and workload for security operations center (SOC) teams by shortening the time they need to investigate incidents. It also helps them prioritize their recovery efforts.

This solution also increases the visibility of phishing campaigns and automatically processes malicious messages reported by employees in a matter of minutes.

Automation reduces the time between notification and correction for time-poor operations teams, providing the following benefits:

Notification by users of possibly fraudulent emails (suspicious item reporting).
Prioritization of e-mail messages by automatic classification, avoiding the need for manual writing and rewriting of rules.
Resolution of active phishing attacks using context analysis to facilitate informed decision making (deleting messages, sending to quarantine, etc...).

Cybercriminals are constantly changing their tactics and techniques.

Applying a multi-layered approach to defense is the best way to deal with today's increasingly sophisticated and rapidly evolving threats.

Clean Email offers two types of protection to suit the size and needs of companies:

○ Clean Email Business, for SMEs.
○ Clean Email Enterprise, for large companies.