Learn how to evaluate and improve your email security strategy by comparing it with industry standards and metrics.

You don't want to be vulnerable to the latest attacks and since email is a top vector for threats, you need a top tier Email Security solution. Gartner's Market Guide for Email Security is good place to start for getting a baseline of capabilities and representative vendors in the space. It will also let you know which threats are being stopped by the top solutions. While many large providers exist, there are also many submental solutions available to augment solutions like Microsoft-365.

How do you benchmark your email security performance against industry standards?

Email security is crucial for protecting your data, reputation, and compliance from cyber threats. But how do you know if your email security strategy is effective and aligned with industry standards? In this article, we will show you how to benchmark your email security performance against best practices and metrics.

1 Why benchmark email security?

Benchmarking email security helps you evaluate your current strengths and weaknesses, identify gaps and risks, and set realistic and measurable goals for improvement. By comparing your email security performance with industry standards, you can also gain insights into how your peers and competitors are managing their email security challenges, and what you can learn from them.

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Ben Collar
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You don't want to be vulnerable to the latest attacks and since email is a top vector for threats, you need a top tier Email Security solution. Gartner's Market Guide for Email Security is good place to start for getting a baseline of capabilities and representative vendors in the space. It will also let you know which threats are being stopped by the top solutions. While many large providers exist, there are also many submental solutions available to augment solutions like Microsoft-365.

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2 What are email security standards?

Email security standards are guidelines and recommendations for implementing and maintaining email security best practices. These standards cover authentication, encryption, filtering, monitoring, reporting, and incident response. DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is a protocol that verifies the sender's identity and prevents spoofing and phishing attacks. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a mechanism that specifies which servers are authorized to send email on behalf of a domain. DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is a method that signs email messages with a cryptographic key to prove their authenticity and integrity. TLS (Transport Layer Security) is a protocol that encrypts the communication between email servers and clients to prevent eavesdropping and tampering. BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification) is a standard that displays a verified logo next to the sender's name to increase trust and visibility.

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Sella Yoffe

Email Deliverability & Email Marketing Expert 💌 Podcaster & Blogger 🎙 Helping global email senders, startups, and ESPs with email deliverability, email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI, etc.), and email strategy.
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The technical setup of email-sending infrastructure is crucial for trust and security. SPF and DKIM protocols provide additional layers of security to email by riding above the SMTP protocol. DMARC protects domains and brands by highlighting the relationship between SPF and DKIM for each sending source. DMARC reports make it easier to fix issues with SPF and DKIM authentication and alignment. The goal is to achieve a DMARC enforcement policy. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are invisible to email recipients. The receiving side is the one that "sees" those. BIMI logos resemble contemporary wax seals, featuring verified checkmarks shown by Gmail and Yahoo. Certain providers may need a VMC certificate to display the BIMI logo and the "V" ticker.

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3 How to measure email security performance?

To benchmark your email security performance, you should define and track metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect your email security objectives and challenges. These metrics and KPIs could include delivery rate, spam rate, phishing rate, encryption rate, compliance rate, incident rate, and response time. Delivery rate is the percentage of email messages that reach the intended recipients without being rejected, bounced, or filtered. Spam rate is the percentage of email messages marked as spam by the recipients or their email providers. Phishing rate is the percentage of email messages containing malicious links or attachments. Encryption rate is the percentage of email messages encrypted in transit and at rest. Compliance rate is the percentage of email messages that comply with applicable laws, regulations, and policies. Incident rate is the number of email security incidents that occur within a given period. Response time is the average time it takes to detect, contain, and resolve an email security incident.

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4 How to compare email security performance?

To compare your email security performance with industry standards, you need to collect and analyze data from reliable and relevant sources. These include your own email security reports and dashboards, which provide detailed and timely information about your security status, trends, and issues. Additionally, industry benchmarks and surveys offer aggregated and anonymized data from other organizations in the same sector or region. Lastly, email security vendors and experts can provide professional advice and feedback on your performance, as well as best practices and solutions to improve it.

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5 How to improve email security performance?

To improve your email security performance, you should take action based on the insights and recommendations you get from benchmarking. This could include implementing or updating your email security policies and procedures, educating and training your staff and users, enhancing or upgrading your email security tools and solutions, and testing and auditing your email security. These steps will help you define your rules, roles, and responsibilities, as well as raise awareness of best practices. Additionally, they provide advanced features to protect, monitor, and manage your email security, such as encryption, filtering, authentication, and reporting. Finally, they verify and validate your email security performance so that you can identify any vulnerabilities or gaps.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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Paul Martin, CISSP 🇺🇦

Cloud & MSP Channel Sales Engineer @ Proofpoint | CISSP
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Efficacy is critical when evaluating email security. You need to ensure that you can stop as much spam and malware as you can. Spam is low level when it comes to ensuring security, but malware, viruses etc... are big threats. Checking DMARC/DKIM/SPF, links and attachments are table stakes for most email security solutions today. But they will not necessarily catch all threats. Business Email Compromise (BEC an attacker pretends to be you) and Email Account Compromise (EAC an attacker hijacks your account and becomes you) can be a lot harder to detect as they are more sophisticated types of attack that may not trigger technological defences. BEC/EAC have their own category in cybercrime and can cost company supply chains $Bs every year.

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How do you benchmark your email security performance against industry standards?

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1 Why benchmark email security?

2 What are email security standards?

3 How to measure email security performance?

4 How to compare email security performance?

5 How to improve email security performance?

6 Here’s what else to consider

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