Email is a common channel for cybercriminals to hack into a system because it was originally designed to be open and accessible to everyone. Of course, those were the nascent stages of the Internet when such sophisticated attacks were unheard of.

But as the Internet grew, it became a popular vector for attacks as hackers began to leverage its open format. In general, emails can be viewed by anyone who intercepts them during the transfer, or at rest. So, hackers started using a variety of techniques to capture emails and access their content.

Further, cybercriminals started exploring ingenious ways like phishing to lure email recipients to click on links. They also started pushing malware and ransomware through email links. All these practices put the spotlight on email security and it became an essential part of every organization’s budget and policy.

To add to it, email has become a critical communication tool in today’s business world, so there is all the more reason to secure it. Organizations started using email best practices and policies to make emails secure. Though these steps made email more secure than before, policies alone were not enough, as is evident from the many hacks that have happened over the years.

Along with email best practices, it became necessary to have email security software in place to make emails secure. In this article, we will look at some of the best email security software.

The Best Email Security Software

Below are some of the best email security software available in the market today.

1. SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) – FREE TRIAL This is an advanced tool that provides complete security for your network and your email IDs. Despite being extensive, it is also easy to set up. Get a fully functional 30-day free trial.
2. SolarWinds Identity Monitor This web-based provides all the features you need to proactively protect your email accounts from any attacks. It can also monitor IP addresses to zero in on potential attacks.
3. Barracuda Email Security Gateway This cloud-based email security platform protects against email-related threats such as malware, spam, phishing, and more. Its many features strive to reduce disruptions and productivity loss due to attacks on your email system.
4. SpamTitan Email Security and Anti-Spam Solution As the name suggests, this platform blocks all malicious emails including spam emails. In turn, this greatly reduces the chances of phishing, ransomware, and malware attacks.
5. Proofpoint Email Protection This email gateway can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises and is known for identifying many known and unknown threats. It uses advanced machine learning technology to reduce the possibility of attacks.

Let’s delve deep into each of these platforms, so you can pick the appropriate one.

1. SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor – FREE TRIAL

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) is a comprehensive server and network monitoring platform that comes with all the features needed to provide total security for your work environment. It is also highly customizable and easy to set up.

Features

In this section, let’s focus only on SAM’s email monitoring features.

• Central Dashboard A highlight of SAM is its central dashboard which contains all the information you need about email monitoring in a single location. As a result, you have complete visibility about your email security and performance, and can accordingly make the required decisions.
• In-depth Information This tool provides in-depth information about email accounts and their use. For example, you can know which users are closer to their inbox limit and the number of attachments stored in it. Armed with this information, you can consider increasing the storage limit if possible or sending notifications to those users to archive emails and download attachments. Such proactive measures reduce the possibility of data corruption in the future.
• End-user Experience SAM is one of the few tools that evaluates email performance from an end-user perspective. Specifically, it monitors the end-user experience, so you can make appropriate changes. This experience is monitored using built-in email server monitors that are designed to analyze behavior patterns and draw relevant insights related to poor service, latency, rate of delivery, and more.
• Out-of-the-box Alerts This tool automatically collects statistics about different inboxes and generates out-of-the-box alerts. No additional configuration is required from you. The obvious advantage is you can plan better for your mailboxes, identify sudden spikes in email traffic, diagnose issues quickly, and troubleshoot any problems with historical data.

Overall, a comprehensive tool that manages your emails and the end-user experience it generates. It also helps with planning and staying on top of all that’s happening with your emails.

Pricing: SAM starts at $1,663 and you can contact the sales team for an exact quote.

Website Link: https://www.solarwinds.com/server-application-monitor

Download: Click here to download your fully functional SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor 30-day free trial.

2. SolarWinds Identity Monitor

SolarWinds Identity Monitor can proactively monitor email and IP addresses to prevent attacks and to help in identifying account takeovers. This is a web-based tool that can be accessed from any place or device.

Features

Here’s a look at some of the features of this tool.

• Prevents Account Takeover A common problem with emails is that hackers can quickly take over one or more email accounts and will use these accounts to send phishing emails to others. The obvious advantage is these emails will seem genuine and there’s a higher chance for people to click on them. The SolarWinds Identity Monitor reduces the chances for this takeover. It constantly monitors the different email domains for exposure and reports if any of the domains are on the credential exposure watchlist. Further, it also notifies if your domain is found in a data leak on the dark web. Besides reporting, it also proactively forces a password for at-risk accounts to negate the consequences of a takeover.
• Instant Notifications The biggest advantage of this tool is that it sends instant notifications when an account is attacked or has the potential for a takeover. Since reaction time is critical for email security, you can take immediate steps to lock the account, inactivate the login credentials, or any measures as per your security policy.
• Private Email Accounts Often, private email accounts are used to generate attacks because they are not as well protected as company email addresses. But SolarWinds Identity Monitor thwarts any attempt to take over personal email accounts too. In particular, it monitors the email IDs of top executives and sends notifications when there are any vulnerabilities.
• Monitors Multiple Domains SolarWinds Identity Monitor stays on top of multiple domains and IP addresses for possible malware injection. Also, it monitors botnets and breaches to see if your IP subnet address has figured in any of them.

In all, Identity Monitor is a comprehensive tool for monitoring your email accounts, IP addresses, and domains. It sends instant notifications if there is a possibility of a breach, thereby helping you to respond quickly.

Pricing: Click here for an online quote.

Check your Exposure: Check your email’s exposure here.

3. Barracuda Email Security Gateway

The Barracuda Email Security Gateway is a cloud-based email security system that monitors and filters all inbound and outbound emails to protect your organization from possible threats and data leaks. Its many features stop a threat before it impacts your organization’s productivity.

Features

Here’s a look at the salient features of Barracuda Email Security Gateway.

• Offers Advanced Protection Barracuda offers Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) to protect your email system from zero-day threats and any other targeted attacks. To this end, it combines behavioral and heuristic strategies that can scan emails and their attachments in real-time and block the malicious or suspected attachments before they enter your network.  It accomplishes this using the Barracuda Real-Time Intelligence System.
• Blocking Spams Spam emails are not just a nuisance but can be a security threat as well. This is why the Barracuda Email Security Gateway uses multiple security layers to effectively identify and block spam emails.
• Encryption Barracuda Email Security Solution is a cloud-based email encryption service that uses AES-256 to encrypt all outgoing emails. This can come in handy to encrypt email traffic across all email servers, provided they use SMTP over TLS.
• Cloud-based Management Being a cloud-based tool, Barracuda provides a web portal that contains all the information needed about your emails. This makes this tool a centralized location to have complete visibility over all the email statistics, possible threats, and more.

In all, Barracuda Email Security Gateway provides a comprehensive email monitoring service to stave off attacks and boost your organization’s productivity.

Pricing: Contact the sales team for a quote.

Free Trial: Click here to try this tool for free.

4. SpamTitan Email Security and Anti-Spam Solution

The SpamTitan Email Security and Anti-Spam Solution is a complete solution for protecting your organization from malicious and spam emails. Its advanced filtering system reduces the chances of malware, ransomware, phishing, and other email-related attacks.

Features

Below are some of the salient features of SpamTitan Email Security and Anti-Spam Solution.

• Blocks Spam Emails SpamTItan blocks not just malicious emails but also spams to ensure that they do not consume your storage. Plus, spam emails can also be a vector for phishing, besides being just annoying. SpamTitan has an advanced block spammer and the company claims that it can catch 99.9% of spam emails with a 0.003% false-positive rate.
• Email Protection A highlight of this platform is its extensive protection from malware, ransomware, and phishing emails. It also boosts your Office365’s security and comes with a defense-in-depth approach that integrates well with your existing infrastructure. Further, it scans the headers and content of all inbound and outbound emails to reduce the chances of attacks such as whaling and spearfishing. Its built-in auto-learning algorithms make this scanning more effective over time.
• Easy Setup This platform is easy to set up and manage and also comes with good customer support. With this combination, you can deploy this platform within minutes and can start seeing the results almost immediately.
• Advanced Features SpamTitan comes with many advanced features such as whitelisting and blacklisting, recipient verification, scanning of outbound emails, and more. Its double antivirus protection is highly effective in blocking spam emails. Plus, it generates many reports that can be used for internal auditing and compliance with existing standards.

Overall, this is a good choice for businesses that want comprehensive email protection to thwart possible attacks related to it.

Pricing: SpamTitan starts at $1.27/user/month for 100 users and this reduces to $1.20/user/month with a two-year contract and $1.14/user/month with a three-year contract respectively.

Free Trial: Click here for a 30-day free trial.

5. Proofpoint Email Protection

Proofpoint Email Protection solution secures and protects your inbound and outbound emails. Powered by its advanced machine learning algorithm, this platform efficiently identifies and stops malicious emails from entering and exiting your system. Further, it provides fine control over email settings.

Features

Let’s now look at the important features of this platform.

• Catches Emerging Threats A salient feature of this platform is its efficient identification of known and unknown threats using its machine learning algorithm and multilayered approach. As a result, phishing, imposter, and fraudulent emails can be detected easily. Further, it also identifies payment redirect and supplier invoicing frauds from any compromised accounts within the organization.
• Flexible and Scalable Proofpoint Email Protection scales well to meet the growing needs of your business. It is also highly customizable and works well across on-prem, SaaS, and virtual machines. You also have the flexibility to create custom firewall and routing rules and deploy them in multiple ways.
• Email Tags Email tags are a unique feature of this platform where tags are attached to suspicious and gray emails before they reach a user’s inbox. This cautions users about the email, so they know how to stay away from potentially malicious ones.
• That said, Proofpoint uses multiple detection layers to identify and block any suspicious email. Also, it uses dynamic reputation analysis to block emails from specific global and local IP addresses.
• Email Management This platform makes it easy to track your emails from a central location. Its powerful search capability eases the process of finding specific emails or log data associated with them. The search results also provide granular information like the metadata, source and destination of the email, size of attachments, and more. Further, it offers encryption and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) capabilities to better manage sensitive data transmitted through emails.

Overall, this is a robust tool for the secure transmission of emails and its advanced capabilities greatly reduce the chances of an attack.

Thus, these are the five best email security software and their features.

Bottom Line

In all, email is the de facto communication channel in the business world today. Unfortunately, it is also a vector for many attacks because of its open format. This combination means that you have to leverage every possible way to safeguard your emails and prevent them from becoming a channel for hackers to enter your system.

While there are many strategies to protect your email, you undoubtedly need robust email security software that will supplement your strategies and email security policies. We have presented the five best tools that can take your organization’s email security to new levels with their capabilities. We hope this detailed breakdown of features helps you to identify the one that best fits your needs.