IT and Security pros are increasingly confident that their email security defenses are up to the challenge of successfully guarding against today’s email-based threats. From email security solutions like secure email gateways and API-based tools to security awareness training and phishing simulation, our respondents are thinking in terms of multiple layers of defense directly related to email.
But it’s also obvious that these same respondents are thinking even more broadly to connect their email security to the rest of their security infrastructure to share indicators of compromise across security layers, to connect the dots to get the fullest context on threats in seconds, and to automate workflows including their response that create greater efficiencies across their security operations.
Key findings include:
- 75% of respondents cited their ability to connect their email security tools to their broader security infrastructure as “Very Important” to “Extremely Important.” Cybersecurity professionals are turning to platform strategies to solve larger-scale security challenges without accompanying increases in budgets or team resources.
- 76% of respondents indicated that their organizations have not experienced a breach with email as the threat vector in the last 12 months.
- 88% of respondents are moderately to extremely confident in the ability of their employees to spot malicious emails.
- 83% of respondents cited their email security solution as “Very Important” to “Extremely Important” to their strategy against email-based ransomware threats.
Meanwhile, we do see some cracks in the facade:
- Despite high overall confidence in their ability to protect against email-based threats, cybersecurity professionals still graded their current email security solution with a low rating of 7.8 out of 10.
- Though 66% of cybersecurity professionals cited ransomware as their top concern, just 53% indicated that they were “Very Confident” to “Extremely Confident” in their capabilities to counter ransomware.
We would like to thank Fortinet for supporting this important industry research project. We hope you find this report informative and helpful as you continue your efforts to secure your organization against email-based threats.
