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Breaking down the traditional approach to email security, experts now recognize its limitations in light of evolving threats. Material Security offers a new paradigm by shifting from perimeter-focused protection to post-breach controls that provide visibility and resilience.
Traditional approaches to email security are being reevaluated due to evolving threats and business needs. Email security must adopt a more holistic and integrated approach, moving beyond prevention. The industry has hit the limits of "prevent everything" with phishing attacks continuing to evolve. Post-breach protections are essential for email security, providing visibility into who accessed sensitive content. A more comprehensive approach encompasses detection, response, and hardening, similar to endpoint protection's evolution. The shift in mentality highlights the importance of a holistic security posture that recognizes the interconnectedness of all digital assets.
The advent of email security has long been a topic of discussion among cybersecurity experts, with the traditional approaches to safeguarding emails being reevaluated in light of evolving threats and business needs. The recent shift in the industry's mindset is akin to the evolution of antivirus software from a perimeter-focused approach to an endpoint detection and response (EDR) model. Just as EDR enhanced endpoint protection by introducing resilience into the security stack, email security must now move beyond prevention to adopt a more holistic and integrated approach.
In this context, Material Security has taken an inside-out approach to email security, focusing on post-breach protections rather than traditional spam filtering or malicious link detection methods. By doing so, they are addressing the limitations of current email security solutions, which often rely heavily on secure email gateways (SEGs) or built-in spam/phishing filters from providers like Google and Microsoft. These tools, much like antivirus software in its early days, inspect inbound traffic, block known-bad content, and let the rest through. However, they have hit the limits of "prevent everything," as phishing attacks continue to evolve, including Business Email Compromise (BEC) schemes that bypass traditional controls entirely.
The analogy between AV and email security is striking, especially when considering how both evolved over time. Just as endpoint protection needed to shift from purely preventive measures to a more comprehensive approach encompassing detection, response, and hardening, so too must email security move beyond its current perimeter-focused model. This involves investing in post-prevention controls, the "EDR for email" layer, which provides visibility into who accessed sensitive content when, from where, and how this occurred.
Moreover, as organizations increasingly rely on Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace for productivity, the blast radius of an email account breach has widened, affecting not just the inbox but also calendars, cloud storage, spreadsheets, and collaborative documents. This lateral movement by attackers underscores the need for a more integrated security strategy that extends across the SaaS suite.
Material Security's approach is illustrative of this shift in mentality. By focusing on post-breach protections and applying similar visibility, access controls, and threat response to the rest of the productivity ecosystem, they demonstrate how email security can evolve beyond its current limitations. This transformation also highlights the importance of adopting a more holistic security posture that recognizes the interconnectedness of all digital assets.
The evolution of email security parallels the growth and adaptation of threats within the cybersecurity landscape. Just as EDR helped endpoint protection evolve from solely preventive to comprehensive security strategies, so too must email security move beyond its current model of preventing everything. This necessitates a deeper understanding of the evolving threat landscape and the adoption of post-prevention controls that provide visibility into the actions taken by attackers.
In conclusion, the shift in email security's paradigm is not merely about recognizing limitations or replacing outdated approaches but rather about embracing an integrated security strategy that mirrors the evolution of endpoint protection. By doing so, organizations can build more resilient defenses against evolving threats and ensure their cybersecurity posture remains current with the ever-evolving digital landscape.
Breaking down the traditional approach to email security, experts now recognize its limitations in light of evolving threats. Material Security offers a new paradigm by shifting from perimeter-focused protection to post-breach controls that provide visibility and resilience.
Related Information:
https://www.ethicalhackingnews.com/articles/Breaking-Down-the-Paradigm-Shift-Why-Email-Security-Needs-its-EDR-Moment-to-Move-Beyond-Prevention-ehn.shtml
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/why-email-security-needs-its-edr-moment-to-move-beyond-prevention/
Published: Wed Aug 20 10:42:36 2025 by llama3.2 3B Q4_K_M
