What Is an Email Security Gateway? How It Works & Benefits

An email security gateway can help reduce multiple categories of email threats, including spam, phishing, malware, spoofing, unauthorized senders, directory-harvesting attempts, and suspicious mail infrastructure.

Spam

Spam includes unsolicited bulk email, promotional abuse, automated campaigns, and other unwanted messages.

Gateway controls can use sender reputation, DNSBLs, rate limits, authentication results, recipient validation, and other signals to identify unwanted traffic.

Phishing

Phishing messages attempt to persuade recipients to disclose credentials, financial information, or other sensitive information.

Some phishing attacks can be detected through authentication, sender reputation, content analysis, URL inspection, or other security signals.

Malware

Malicious email attachments or links can deliver malware, ransomware, trojans, or other harmful software.

Content inspection and antivirus capabilities become particularly important for messages that have passed earlier protocol-level checks.

Email spoofing

Spoofing occurs when an attacker attempts to make a message appear to originate from a trusted domain or sender.