If attackers want a way into your company, they usually start with email. It’s where invoices arrive, passwords get reset, and “urgent” messages from the CEO land in people’s inboxes. One wrong click can move money, leak data, or hand over access to your entire environment.
Technical controls won’t stop every mistake, but they can catch a lot of trouble before it reaches your staff. Below are seven widely used email security tools, with Check Point first, followed by other options that often appear on shortlists.
1. Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration
Check Point’s Harmony Email & Collaboration sits directly on top of cloud mail services like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Instead of acting only as a gateway at the edge of the network, it plugs into the mailboxes and collaboration systems themselves.
It’s designed to catch phishing, business email compromise, and malware by looking at more than just keywords or sender addresses. The service tracks unusual login locations, changes to mailbox rules, and messages that closely imitate known contacts. As an email security platform, it also extends coverage to tools like Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint, which is important because attackers often pivot into those once they get a single account.
2. Microsoft Defender for Office 365
For companies already on Microsoft 365, Defender for Office 365 is often the first extra layer people turn on. It adds attachment sandboxing, URL detonation, and anti‑phishing logic on top of basic spam filtering.
The real benefit shows up when you connect it with the rest of the Microsoft stack. A suspicious email, a risky sign‑in, and odd behavior on an endpoint can all feed into one view, which helps you see where a campaign started and how far it went.
3. Google Workspace Advanced Email Protection
If your organization runs on Gmail and Google Workspace, a lot of security is already built in, but it’s easy to leave features underused. Google’s advanced protection options add stronger phishing defenses, attachment scanning, and controls around spoofing and impersonation.
Admins can set granular rules for who can send and receive certain types of content, apply data loss prevention policies, and require additional verification for sensitive actions. Used properly, it moves Gmail from “basic spam filter” to a more controlled environment that’s still familiar for users.
4. Proofpoint Email Protection
Proofpoint has a long history in enterprise email security and is known for strong detection of targeted phishing and business email compromise. It rewrites links, sandboxes attachments, and uses a lot of context to decide whether a message is likely to be malicious rather than just annoying.
One extra angle Proofpoint brings is insight into who attackers focus on. It can highlight “very attacked people” inside your organization and tie that into training and awareness, so you’re not treating every user exactly the same when clearly some get hit more than others.
5. Mimecast Email Security
Mimecast usually sits in front of your email system, inspecting inbound, outbound, and internal traffic. It tackles spam, phishing, and malware, but also leans into continuity and archiving.
That means if your primary email platform goes down or you intentionally take it offline during an incident Mimecast can give staff a way to keep sending and receiving mail. For companies where email is the main record of conversations and approvals, having filtering, resilience, and archiving together is often more compelling than just blocking bad messages.
6. Barracuda Email Protection
Barracuda offers a mix of gateway‑based and API‑driven protection, so it can work with both on‑prem and cloud email setups. Features include spam filtering, spear‑phishing detection, account takeover protection, and attachment/URL inspection.
Many teams like Barracuda because it’s relatively straightforward to deploy and run. You don’t have to redesign the entire mail environment to get value from it, which makes it practical for organizations with smaller IT teams or mixed legacy and cloud setups.
7. Cisco Secure Email
Cisco Secure Email (formerly Email Security Appliance) combines spam filtering, malware detection, and advanced threat analysis, with deployment options on‑premises or in the cloud. It feeds on threat intelligence from Cisco Talos, which tracks large‑scale campaigns across the internet.
For companies already using Cisco for networking and security, this tool fits into an existing ecosystem: email events can be correlated with firewall logs, endpoint alerts, and network telemetry. That broader picture can matter a lot when you’re trying to understand whether a single suspicious message was an isolated attempt or part of something bigger.
Bringing It All Together
No email security tool is perfect, and none of them completely removes the need for staff training. But the gap between “basic spam filtering” and a well‑configured modern email security stack is huge.
Check Point’s Harmony Email & Collaboration is one option that treats email and collaboration apps as a single attack surface rather than separate problems. Tools from Microsoft, Google, Proofpoint, Mimecast, Barracuda, and Cisco each bring their own strengths, whether that’s tight integration with an existing platform, strong phishing analytics, or built‑in continuity.
The right choice depends on where your mail lives today, what other security tools you already rely on, and how much time your team can realistically spend tuning and watching the system. What matters most is recognizing that the inbox isn’t just a convenience tool it’s one of the main front doors into your company, and it deserves protection to match.
