# What is Email Security?

> Email security is the combination of controls used to protect email identities, infrastructure, messages, users, and business processes.

- Canonical URL: https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/email-security/
- Publisher: Yellow Cube
- Language: en
- Contact: hello@yellowcube.eu

## Content

It addresses threats including impersonation, account takeover, malicious content, unwanted mail, interception, data leakage, fraud, and disruption.

No single gateway or protocol secures the entire channel. A sound design combines sending-domain authentication, transport protection, account security, content analysis, endpoint safeguards, data controls, resilient administration, user reporting, and incident response. High-risk business actions such as payment changes need controls outside email itself.

### Key points

- **Domain authentication:** SPF and DKIM authenticate particular domain-level identifiers; DMARC checks their alignment with the visible From domain and publishes a handling preference for failures.
- **Account protection:** Phishing-resistant MFA, conditional access, secure recovery, and monitoring reduce account takeover risk.
- **Message protection:** Filtering, attachment and link analysis, encryption where required, and data-loss controls address content and handling.
- **Operational protection:** Logging, mailbox-rule monitoring, administrative separation, backups or retention, reporting, and response support investigation.
- **Important limitation:** A message from a legitimate but compromised account may pass technical authentication and still be malicious.

### Related terms

[Phishing](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/phishing/>) · [Email spoofing](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/email-spoofing/>) · [Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/domain-based-message-authentication-reporting-and-conformance/>) · [Business email compromise (BEC)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/business-email-compromise/>) · [Data loss prevention (DLP)](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/data-loss-prevention/>) · [File-sharing security](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/file-sharing-security/>) · [Spam filtering](<https://yellowcube.eu/glossary/spam-filtering/>)

### Sources

[NIST SP 800-177r1: Trustworthy Email](https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/177/r1/final) · [CISA: Enhance Email and Web Security](https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/CISAInsights-Cyber-EnhanceEmailandWebSecurity_S508C.pdf)

## Attribution and scope

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