Email Security: URL Protect

Mimecast® Targeted Threat Protection with URL Protect is an advanced email security service that protects email users from malicious URLs in spear-phishing attacks.

Targeted Threat Protection with URL Protect rewrites all links in inbound emails and scans the destination website in real-time when clicked to help ensure malicious websites are blocked, regardless of the client or device in use. Before you are given access to the URL, security checks are performed on the destination, validation and assessment of the URL is also undertaken, making use of both real-time and cached feeds and also employing advanced heuristic analysis.

Lastly, Mimecast uses global allow/block lists based on our own threat intelligence. In short Mimecast performs URL sandboxing for each and every click before redirecting the user to the requested site.

Video: 58 Seconds

How it works:

• As email passes through the Mimecast Secure Email Gateway, URL Protect rewrites all URLs in every email.
• On a click these rewritten links point back to Mimecast’s threat analysis infrastructure which scans the site to determine if the destination website is malicious before delivering the page.
• Users are permitted access to clean sites without delay, while access to malicious sites are blocked.
• User awareness challenges prompt users to think about the source of the email and provide education on malicious websites.
• For links within attachments the URLs are scanned on entry into the Mimecast Gateway and if any malicious URLs are found the attachment is stripped from the email and the receiver is warned that the attachment was malicious.