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E-mail Protection Guides - Vipre
The Vipre (which used to be called Fusemail) protects you from junk e-mail and other security threats.
What happens to my inbound e-mail?
If you have Vipre protecting you, every e-mail that you receive will be processed and assessed as far as risks. This will involve looking at the sender, the contents of the message, any links in the message, and any attachments in the message.
Depending upon how trusted the sender is, and the content of the message, Vipre may allow the message to flow through to your Inbox normally, or depending upon the risk that the system perceives, it may categorise the message as Junk, Phishing, Malware or other forms of attack.
Attachments
The Vipre Essentials system checks attachments and blocks the main attachments types.
Attachments and Links
If you have the Vipre higher level ATP system, ATP will check links and attachments in e-mails sent to you.
Links and attachments are some of the biggest risks that occur via e-mail. Links can be used to try to get you to visit malicious websites, to either download malware, or to tempt you to go to "Phishing" sites. Phishing sites are fraudulent sites set up to look like a real site, e.g. Microsoft 365 or HMRC login pages, in order to prompted you to type in your username and password.
ATP SafeLinks aims to detect these malicious links, and replaces them with a "Safelink" so that if you click on the link, ATP can check the site for you first before you visit it. ATP is constantly learning using a combination of humans and artificial intelligence, to updated it's database of safe and unsafe sites. Safe sites you should be allowed to visit, and unsafe sites will be blocked. However by the very nature of the threats, new unsafe sites are constantly being created. So this is not 100% protection - the first people targetted with a new unsafe site may not be protected. ATP is like a vaccine - it gives you very good protection, protecting you from the majority of threats, but you do still need to have awareness and be on your guard. It will also sometimes prevent you from getting to a site that is valid.
ATP SafeAttachments aims to protect you from malware being sent as an attachment. It will attempt to open an attachment and check that it is safe, before releasing the e-mail to you.
Based upon the content of the message, the sender, and the links and attachments, Vipre will then categorise the message and take one of a number of actions. Legitimate, Junk/Spam, Phishing, or Malware.
What's Junk email?
Junk email messages are typically referred to as spam. These are messages that you don't want to receive that may be advertising products you don't use or find offensive. Depending upon your settings these may either be passed through to your Junk mailbox, or may be included in your daily quarantine reports.
What's phishing?
Phishing is the practice of luring you into disclosing personal information, such as bank account numbers and passwords. Often phishing messages look legitimate, but have deceptive links that actually open fake websites.
What's malware?
Malware is types of software/files that attempt to do something detrimental to your system - deleting data, sending a copy of you data to someone else, or encrypting it to request a ransom ("Ransomware"). If the system suspects it has found Malware it will usually quarantine it so that only an administrator can see it and review it.
What are SPF failures?
SPF "Sender Protection Framework" is a system aimed to protect the integrity of e-mail, so that only approved servers can send e-mails on behalf of a given company/organisation. An "SPF failure" can indicate that the message may have been sent from an attacker intending to impersonate that actual organisation. However - some organisations have set up SPF to protect themselves, but then as their own systems have evolved - such as adding CRM or e-mail marketing systems - they have not realised they need to update their SPF settings to include their new systems. In these scenarios, recipients of e-mails get warned that the message may not be from a trusted source, and therefore quarantine the message. You can read more about SPF failures here.
Quarantine
When Vipre determines that a message is suspicious, it may either route the message to your Junk folder, or it may hold it in "Quarantine" in order to protect you and your system. You will normally get an e-mail every 24 hours (or more frequently) if there are any new messages that have been held in quarantine for you.