What Is A Secure Email Gateway? (And Where To Get One)

Email is not as safe as it appears to be. Every day, your email service likely blocks multiple malicious messages from reaching your inbox. The messages you do see are the ones that get past what’s called a Secure Email Gateway (or SEG).

That gateway is what protects you from email attacks such as phishing attempts. How well it performs depends on what security solution you use and how it’s configured. In some cases, those decisions are up to your email provider. Still, understanding how these secure gateways work is key to making sense of modern email services and choosing the best tools for your needs.

In this article, we’ll talk more about how secure email gateways work and what makes some better than others. We’ll also introduce you several to SEGs you might consider using. Let’s get to it!

What Is A Secure Email Gateway?

If you’ve been using email for a while now (and who hasn’t!), you may have noticed that it’s become safer over the years. Depending on your email provider, it’s more and more rare to get messages with malicious links, spam, and email threats in general. That’s largely thanks to secure email gateways.

A secure email gateway is software that’s designed to combat modern email threats. It monitors incoming and outgoing email traffic at the inbox, network, and organization levels, in order to identify threats and deal with them.

Depending on the nature of the identified threats, the secure email gateway may send emails to the spam folder or outright block them. A SEG can also act as a an email security solution at the organization level, by monitoring for sensitive or confidential data that’s being sent to third parties.

Most modern email service providers offer custom SEG solutions. If you’re part of an organization, you can also implement email security solutions that are more tailored to your specific needs.

In terms of functionality, secure email gateways route emails, analyze and filter them, and take specific actions. What action is taken in each situation will depend on the SEG’s policies. The gateway can also inform administrators and other members of a security team about potential threats.

If that all sounds familiar, it’s because SEGs function very similarly to firewalls. The main difference is that SEGs focus solely on emails, whereas firewalls tend to monitor all incoming and outgoing traffic.

What Features To Look for in Secure Email Gateways

The features a particular secure email gateway offers will vary, depending on how it’s implemented. What every SEG has in common is that it focuses on helping you block email threats. Here are some of the ways they do that.

Threat Prevention

Recognizing incoming threats is one of the main functions of any SEG. The software typically uses something called ‘threat intelligence’. This means it’s trained on existing threats to be able to recognize similar or new attacks within incoming messages.

Depending on what system you use, it may also monitor outgoing emails. This can prevent data breaches and help you if attackers gain control over internal addresses and try to use them to send malicious emails.

Email Encryption

Modern secure email gateways tend to offer email encryption. This doesn’t necessarily help you block incoming threats, but it’s an essential component in web security.

These days, most of the websites you frequent will use HTTPS encryption to secure data during transit. A SEG can provide this same functionality for the emails you send, which can be incredibly valuable for your business.

If you use a modern email service provider, it’s likely it already encrypts your messages to protect personal information. Some providers are more security-focused than others, but most reputable services will offer some type of SEG.

Spam Filtering

Securing your inbox from spam is about more than just avoiding hassle. Spam can run the gamut from unwanted promotional emails to outright phishing attacks.

If you leave spam unchecked, it’s only a matter of time before someone falls for a fake request, clicks on the wrong link, or shares sensitive information with a malicious third party. A primary goal of any secure email gateway should be to minimize this risk by recognizing spam emails and blocking them.

How effective a SEG is at filtering spam will depend on what solution you’re using and how you configure it. If you depend on your email service provider, you might not have much control over how its security solution handles spam. However, it’s important to learn as much as you can about your provider’s approach.

Reporting and Analysis

Threat reporting is essential for businesses and organizations that depend on email for critical functions. That includes most modern businesses (if not all of them). So if you use a secure email gateway, it stands to reason that you’ll want to receive notifications about threats as they pop up, as well as full reports on any security issues.

The ability to analyze email threats will give you a better understanding of what measures to take to protect your business. These measures can range from security awareness training to overhauls of your organization’s response capabilities.

Regular email services don’t provide you with this type of information about the malicious or harmful content they block. If you want access to that kind of reporting, you’ll need to use a secure email gateway solution.

3 Popular Secure Email Gateway Solutions

If you want to use a custom email security solution, you’ll also need email hosting. With email hosting, you get full control over your inboxes and any security tools you use for them.

At SirsteveHQ, we offer a email hosting service. You can get everything you need for your business website in one place.

That includes custom email addresses as well as a domain and full-featured web hosting. You’ll also get access to a knowledgeable support team that’s available 24/7/365.

Most importantly for our purposes here, you’ll be free to set up any secure email gateway solution you’re interested in using. This enables you to choose the perfect solution for your business’ needs.

If you’re not sure where to begin looking, here are three of our recommended choices. These are not the only options, but they are among the most popular and well-regarded services to help you increase email security. The solution you choose should depend on what email service you use, the functionality you need, and whether you’re using email hosting.

1. Proofpoint

Proofpoint offers a suite of email security services, including email authentication, cloud backup solutions, and ransomware protection. This platform also provides training for organizations to help employees better understand email threats and how to protect against them. Proofpoint is optimized to work with Microsoft 365, but it also integrates with other email service providers.

2. Avanan

This secure email gateway service offers a collection of tools including phishing and malware protection, security against account takeovers, and more. Avanan also provides solutions in case your business emails become compromised and you need to restore them. This service also works with both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

3. Microsoft Defender for Office

If your organization uses Microsoft tools such as Office, it makes sense to also use its Defender solution. This platform focuses on helping you avoid security threats by blocking malicious emails and other kinds of attacks, such as ransomware.

Conclusion

If you only use a personal email account, your provider most likely uses some type of secure email gateway software to protect your inbox against threats. However, if you have a custom business email address and email hosting, you may need to choose and implement a secure email gateway solution yourself.

There are a lot of choices when it comes to email security software. What’s important is that you choose software that works with your email service provider, fits your budget, and offers all the security features you’ll need. That includes phishing protection, security against account takeovers, spam filtering, and reporting.

Do you have any questions about how to choose the right secure email gateway for your needs? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!