What is Email security?

Written by Sid Collis from Bold IT

Email security refers to the technologies, policies and best practices used to keep your email systems safe from cyber threats.

In our modern, always-connected world, it’s never been more essential, or more difficult, to protect your business from risks like phishing, malware, spoofing and unauthorised access.

As a core communication tool for businesses, email remains one of the biggest targets for cyber criminals trying to infiltrate your system.

What is email security about? It’s about securing business data, protecting systems, educating staff and doing everything possible to reduce the risk of attacks that often begin in the inbox.

In this blog post, we’ll be highlighting what you need to know about email security and how our cyber security services can help your business stay safe.

Why is Email security important?

When a large company is hit with a cyber-attack, it’s big news and the disruption, loss of earnings and reputational damage caused is always vast.

Smaller companies may not make the news, but the risks are just as great – indeed online criminals target small businesses, assuming their email security will be easier to breach.

Exploiting weaknesses in email security remains one of the easiest entry points for cyber criminals.

Taking email security seriously means identifying risks early and putting safeguards in place before attackers get the chance, protecting your business from the serious consequences resulting from leaked customer data, costly downtime and legal compliance failures.

Benefits of Email security

Protection against phishing

Phishing is one of the most common and damaging email threats.

It tricks employees into clicking malicious links or sharing sensitive data.

With robust filtering and proactive monitoring, you can stop attacks before they happen. Learn more in our guide to what is phishing and how to prevent it.

Increased data security

Emails often carry confidential business and customer data.

Without proper protection, this information can be intercepted or leaked.

Email security solutions use encryption, filtering and access controls to keep sensitive information private, helping you stay secure and compliant.

Threat detection

Many email threats are part of broader cyber-attacks.

That’s why we always recommend pairing your email security with 24/7 proactive network monitoring to help detect suspicious activity across your systems.

This ensures potential threats are flagged and contained before they cause damage.

Email security best practices

Multi-Factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) adds an extra, and increasingly essential, layer of defence beyond just a password, such as using a code sent to your mobile or an authentication app to confirm identity.

MFA makes it significantly harder for cyber criminals to gain access – a quick win that dramatically reduces risk across your email systems.

Regular updates

Cyber criminals constantly look for weaknesses in software, and outdated systems are an easy target.

Keeping your email platforms, security software and operating systems up to date ensures any vulnerabilities are patched quickly.

Regular updates help protect your infrastructure and stop attackers from exploiting known flaws in older versions.

Security training for staff

What is email security good for if employees aren’t treated as your first line of defence?

Your employees will often be targeted in phishing attacks, and our security awareness training helps staff recognise and report threats, avoid unsafe clicks and understand what to look out for.

Ongoing training ensures your team stays alert to evolving tactics.

Network monitoring

Email isn’t the only way hackers and cyber attackers can access your systems, so round-the-clock network monitoring is essential for tracking unusual behaviour, spotting intrusions and reacting in real time to developing threats.

This strengthens your entire infrastructure and helps contain issues before they escalate into full-scale breaches.

Action plan

Even with the strongest protection, incidents can still occur.

That’s why a well-prepared response plan – which can be part of your wider disaster recovery plan – helps your business react swiftly and effectively.

From isolating affected accounts to restoring secure backups, a strong action plan limits damage, protects your data and ensures minimal disruption to business operations.

How we protect your business from Email attacks

We hope this blog has helped answer the question, “What is email security?” From phishing protection to compliance support, getting your email defences right is critical for every modern business, and we’re here to ensure you get it right.

Explore our full range of email security solutions to see how we help clients stay secure, informed and one step ahead of the threats.