Picture this: you’ve fortified every laptop in your organization with real-time telemetry, rapid isolation, and automated rollback. Yet, the corporate mailbox—the primary entry point for most cyberattackers—remains guarded by outdated security filters akin to those from the 1990s.
This disparity raises significant concerns. Email persists as a dominant vector for breaches, yet it’s often perceived merely as a static flow of messages rather than a dynamic environment. This scenario is fraught with vulnerabilities such as OAuth tokens, shared drive links, and a wealth of sensitive data accumulated over years.
The discourse surrounding email security needs transformation. We should transition from the question, "Did the gateway block the bad thing?" to "How swiftly can we identify, contain, and reverse the damage once an attacker infiltrates our system?"
Examining email security through this lens requires a shift towards an "assume-breach" and "detect-and-respond" mentality, similar to the revolution spurred in endpoint protection.
The Crumbling Fortress
It’s widely acknowledged that phishing and credential theft remain at the forefront of breach incidents, often resulting in financial impacts from Business Email Compromise (BEC) that surpass those from ransomware. However, the statistics reveal a more nuanced narrative reminiscent of the decline of traditional antivirus systems.
A decade ago, antivirus systems effectively caught known threats but frequently allowed zero-day vulnerabilities and novel malware to slip through the cracks. Thus, Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) systems emerged, providing visibility once an attacker had already penetrated the defenses.
Email security is now on a similar trajectory. Secure Email Gateways (SEGs) perform adequately at filtering spam and basic phishing attempts, yet they struggle against modern threats such as:
- Payload-less Business Email Compromise (BEC).
- Malicious links weaponized post-delivery.
- Account takeovers via stolen credentials, executed without any malware presence.
Once an email account is compromised, attackers gain access to a network of connected applications, shared files, chat histories, and calendar invites within platforms like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Typically, lateral movement within this interconnected web does not trigger alerts from SEGs, allowing the attack to unfold entirely within the cloud environment.
Learning from the Endpoint Paradigm
In the realm of endpoint security, breakthroughs arose when the realization emerged that effective prevention must be paired with continuous visibility and prompt, automated response. EDR platforms enabled the documentation of process trees, registry changes, and network communications. When a threat was detected, the affected host could be isolated, and changes rolled back, all from a singular interface.
Now envision an equivalent for email administrators: a rewind button for messages that covers OAuth scopes and file shares; the capability to freeze or at least challenge with multi-factor authentication (MFA) any mailbox the moment a risky rule is established; a timeline revealing who accessed sensitive threads following a credential compromise.
This amalgamation of capabilities represents a modern EDR-like approach to email security. The underlying principle remains straightforward: prepare for the inevitability of an attacker breaching a mailbox, and devise the necessary tools for detecting, probing, and containing the fallout.
The API Awakening
For years, incorporating post-delivery controls into email security has necessitated complex configurations or expansive endpoint agents. However, advancements in cloud suites have alleviated this issue.
APIs from Microsoft Graph and Google Workspace now securely expose vital telemetry—mailbox audit logs, message IDs, sharing events, and permission changes—through OAuth. These APIs not only facilitate visibility but also provide command. They can revoke tokens, retrieve delivered messages from all inboxes, or eliminate forwarding rules promptly.
The sensors and actuators are already integrated into the platforms. The next step is harnessing them within workflows that emulate EDR environments. This overarching telemetry allows security teams to break free from the arduous task of constantly tuning filter rules. Instead of waiting for users to report a phishing attempt, the system can identify improbable travel sign-ins, recognize the subsequent creation of multiple new sharing links, and automatically mitigate the associated risks.
Addressing the Needs of Smaller Security Teams
In many small to mid-sized companies, a lone security director often assumes multiple roles, managing vulnerability assessments, incident responses, and compliance efforts. Tool sprawl poses a significant challenge.
An EDR-like approach to email security merges several disparate controls—SEG policy, Data Loss Prevention (DLP), incident response protocols, and SaaS-to-SaaS monitoring—into a cohesive interface. This eliminates the need for MX record modifications, agent deployments, and reliance on user-initiated phishing reports.
Furthermore, it provides actionable metrics. Instead of merely citing an arbitrary "catch rate," organizations can address board-level inquiries with quantifiable data, such as:
- The promptness of detecting compromised mailboxes.
- The volume of sensitive data accessible before containment.
- The number of risky OAuth grants revoked within the quarter.
These statistics reflect actual risk mitigation, rather than theoretical filter performance.
A Steady Path Forward
Transitioning to this advanced framework doesn’t necessitate a large-scale overhaul. The journey can be approached incrementally, with each step yielding substantial security enhancements:
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Enable native audit logs. Both Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace incorporate comprehensive logging, forming the foundational context needed for future automation.
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Centralize your telemetry. In your Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) or logging platform, begin tracking signals indicative of compromise, such as sudden mail rule creation, mass file downloads, unusual sign-in locations, and new OAuth grants.
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Test automated response. Utilize the built-in APIs to experiment with message retrieval during phishing simulations, enabled by endpoints from both Microsoft Graph and Gmail.
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Evaluate dedicated platforms. Assess their range of coverage, sophistication in post-compromise playbooks, and the speed of detection to action conversions.
This journey transforms uncertainty into tangible evidence, enabling live breaches to be managed as contained incidents, ensuring human resources are allocated commensurately with team size.
Conclusion
In the current landscape, no one would contend that basic endpoint antivirus stands adequate alone. Prevention will eventually be overcome; hence, the focus must shift towards detection and response protocols. Email security requires a similarly pragmatic framework.
Inbound detection remains a vital component, but if your security infrastructure can’t identify who accessed a sensitive contract post-mailbox compromise, or automatically prevent such breaches, you remain entrenched in an outdated paradigm. Email, akin to laptops, is in dire need of an upgrade.
Material Security embodies this modern approach to email security, acknowledging it as a dynamic environment necessitating robust post-delivery defenses, rather than mere pre-delivery filters. By integrating seamlessly with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace via their APIs, deploying Material is quick and straightforward, with minimal disruption to operations.
Once established, Material logs detailed telemetry akin to EDR systems on endpoints, documenting every mailbox rule, OAuth grant, file share, and sign-in event. It layers automated playbooks that significantly reduce breach durations from days to mere minutes, empowering teams to swiftly manage even the subtlest of threats and ensure better protection of sensitive data.
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