Why Is AI-enhanced Email Security Superior to Conventional Security Or a SEG?

AI-enhanced email security offers several advantages over conventional email security measures and secure email gateways (SEGs). By leveraging AI, email security solutions become more dynamic, adaptive and effective, providing superior protection against the ever-evolving landscape of email-based cyberthreats. A side-by-side comparison of 8 factors shows why AI-enhanced solutions are superior to conventional security or a SEG.

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1. Advanced threat detection

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Conventional security: Typically relies on pre-defined rules and signature-based detection methods. It can be effective against known threats but struggles with new, unknown or sophisticated attacks.

SEG: Primarily relies on signature-based detection and predefined rules. This limitation means that a SEG struggles to detect new, unknown or sophisticated threats not covered by existing signatures.

AI-enhanced security: Utilizes machine learning models to identify patterns and anomalies in email data. AI can detect zero-day threats and sophisticated phishing attempts that conventional methods may miss. Plus, machine learning ensures that AI continuously learns from new data to improve threat detection capabilities.

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2. Behavioral analysis

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Conventional security: Limited ability to analyze user behavior and detect anomalies. It often relies on static lists and rules that can quickly become outdated.

SEG: Typically does not analyze user behavior or account activity. It cannot detect anomalies in user behavior that might indicate a compromised account or phishing attack.

AI-enhanced security: Monitors and learns normal user behavior to detect deviations that might indicate compromised accounts or phishing. It provides dynamic and context-aware security that adapts to each user’s unique behavior, improving detection accuracy and quickly enabling it to spot anomalies.

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3. Real-time and proactive protection

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Conventional security: May not provide real-time threat analysis and mitigation. It is often limited to reacting to threats only after they have entered the network.

SEG: Often reacts to threats based on static rules and periodic updates. This weakness means that it lacks real-time threat analysis capability, leading to delayed responses.

AI-enhanced security: Analyzes and filters emails in real-time, providing immediate protection. This enables it to automatically block malicious emails before they reach the user’s inbox, reducing the risk of successful attacks.

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4. NLP and content analysis

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Conventional security: Typically uses keyword-based filtering and basic content analysis. This makes it possible for bad actors to bypass it with sophisticated phishing tactics that use obfuscated language.

SEG: Uses basic keyword filtering and content analysis. It can be bypassed by sophisticated phishing attempts that use generative AI-generated phishing messages or advanced social engineering tactics.

AI-enhanced security: Employs natural language processing (NLP) to understand and analyze the context and intent of email content. This enables it to detect phishing attempts that use subtle language cues or social engineering tactics, which conventional filters might miss.

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5. Adaptive learning and continuous improvement

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Conventional security: Relies on periodic updates to threat databases and rules. Can be slow to adapt to new threats and attack vectors.

SEG: Relies on regular updates to rules and threat databases. This makes a SEG slow to adapt to new threats and attack vectors.

AI-enhanced security: Continuously learns from new threats and feedback, updating models and improving detection over time. ML ensures that the AI stays ahead of emerging threats including zero days, providing up-to-date protection without the need for manual intervention.

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6. Efficiency and scalability

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Conventional security: May struggle with large volumes of email traffic, leading to performance issues. This means it often requires significant manual oversight and management.

SEG: May struggle with high volumes of email traffic, impacting performance and slowing message delivery. It requires frequent adjustments, updates and management by skilled IT personnel.

AI-enhanced security: Scales efficiently to handle large volumes of email without degrading performance. This future-ready capability reduces or eliminates the need for manual oversight, giving IT professionals precious time that they can use to focus on more critical tasks.

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7. Integration with threat intelligence

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Conventional security: May not integrate seamlessly with external threat intelligence feeds. It often relies on internal databases, which can quickly become outdated and need frequent updates by technicians to reflect current threats.

SEG: May be limited in its ability to draw from external threat intelligence feeds and sources. SEGs are typically dependent on internal, static databases that require someone on the IT team’s intervention to upkeep.

AI-enhanced security: Integrates with global threat intelligence feeds to stay updated on the latest threats. AI enables an email security solution to enact proactive defensive measures, such as blocking known malicious IP addresses or domains, based on real-time threat intelligence.

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8. Automated incident response

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Conventional security: Typically involves manual intervention to respond to detected threats. This leads to delays in risk mitigation and ultimately increased risk as potentially dangerous messages aren’t quarantined.

SEG: Usually requires manual intervention for threat response. A delay could be disastrous in the case of many email-based cyberattacks because it could create the opportunity for employees to interact with malicious messages.

AI-enhanced security: Automates the response to detected threats and mitigates risk by utilizing a variety of defensive measures such as quarantining emails, alerting users and initiating mitigation steps. This reduces response time and minimizes the impact of threats, enhancing overall security posture.

AI-enhanced email security provides a more dynamic, adaptive and effective approach to email protection compared to traditional SEGs, making it a superior choice for defending against the evolving landscape of email-based cyber threats.

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Kaseya’s Security Suite helps businesses mitigate all types of cyber-risk affordably

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Kaseya’s Security Suite has the tools that MSPs and IT professionals need to mitigate cyber-risk effectively and affordably. It features automated and AI-driven features that make IT professionals’ lives easier. 

BullPhish ID: This effective, automated security awareness training and phishing simulation solution provides critical training that improves compliance, prevents employee mistakes and reduces a company’s risk of being hit by a cyberattack.    

Dark Web ID: Our award-winning dark web monitoring solution is the channel leader for good reason. It provides the greatest amount of protection around, with 24/7/365 human- and machine-powered monitoring of business and personal credentials, including domains, IP addresses and email addresses.   

Graphus – Graphus is a cutting-edge, automated phishing defense solution that puts three layers of AI-powered protection between employees and phishing messages. It supercharges your Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace email security.       

Vonahi Penetration Testing: How sturdy are your cyber defenses? Do you have dangerous vulnerabilities? Find out with vPenTest, a SaaS platform that makes getting the best network penetration test easy and affordable for internal IT teams.  

Learn more about our security products, or better yet, book a demo today!