The threat landscape of 2025 is poised for an AI revolution, and any defenses in place will almost certainly fall short.
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“Email is the most common cyber attack vector for businesses,” just reinforced a new report on cyber insurance,”serving as the most widespread initial entry point for launching financial fraud, ransomware and data breach attacks”.
Despite the cyber noise, sometimes a statistic or data point still has the potential to stand out. So does At-Bay’s latest report, which touts the benefits of email that’s more secure by default. Maybe there is hope after all, writes forbes.com.
At home there are checks you can do that will help you review your settings and make recommendations – for example, the Google Account Security Check. At work, however, the situation is more complex, given that many of these settings will be controlled by the IT department. But this flexibility comes at a price. “At-Bay strongly recommends moving to a cloud-based email solution to reduce security risks and ensure proactive vulnerability management.”
Nothing new here – but this transition to the cloud brings the potential to build increasingly game-changing defenses around email and rethink the way these platforms work. We’re not there yet, but this is a step.
Gmail scores well in the new report — its security updates over the past few years are paying off in real-world data collected from actual cyber insurance claims. “Organizations that have used Google Workspace”, says At-Bay, “they had the lowest incident frequency on average. Compared to the overall average, the frequency of Google claims was 54% lower.” The insurer points to features included by default “that may not be set by default in other email solutions.”
These include “real-time scanning of phishing emails and malicious attachments, automatic security updates to protect against vulnerabilities, and integrated threat intelligence to proactively identify and respond to potential threats.”
Gmail might be the biggest email provider on our planet with its claimed 2.5 billion users, but Workspace doesn’t dominate the workplace the way Gmail dominates the home. The point is that there is no need to play with the settings to secure the platform, it is “a comprehensive and robust security framework out of the box, requiring no extra attention to install or configure.” It’s harder to do a comp on the wider world, but this enterprise data provides some evidence that this approach is working and that defaults are getting better.
The question is how this will evolve to deal with the new AI threats that are rapidly heading our way. Email is a second-rate technology that hasn’t evolved at the same pace as almost everything else. We still see too many blatant threats that slip past any defenses and end up in our mailboxes. It’s still too easy for anyone to send ping messages, and new innovations in artificial intelligence are making it even more dangerous, making these threats more realistic.
We are now witnessing two parallel developments. A hybrid combination of on-device and cloud screening for threats that target our phones in particular, but new desktops and laptops with artificial intelligence can extend this; and new safe browsing innovations that don’t just rely on centralized lists. It’s time for a rethink of email, one that transforms it into a more messaging-like platform that analyzes emails for threats on a level that doesn’t happen today. This is what Elon Musk has in mind with X-Mail.
Realistically, Google and Gmail are best placed to do this primarily within a huge user base. But in the meantime, these statistics are a great advertisement for fully managed, cloud-based email at home and at work. Whether it’s Gmail or one of the alternatives, if you’re not currently using the service, then the numbers suggest it might be time to make the switch.
