Cisco Email Security Virtual Appliance
Automate email security to give your IT staff more time to focus on other issues.

Overview:

Cisco Email Security includes advanced threat protection capabilities to detect, block, and remediate threats faster; prevent data loss; and secure important information in transit with end-to-end encryption.

With Cisco Email Security customers can:

• Detect and block more threats with superior threat intelligence from Talos™, our threat research team.
• Combat ransomware hidden in attachments that evade initial detection with Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) and Cisco Threat Grid.
• Drop emails with risky links automatically or block access to newly infected sites with real-time URL analysis to protect against phishing and BEC.
• Prevent brand abuse and sophisticated identity-based email attacks with Cisco Domain Protection (CDP) and Cisco Advanced Phishing Protection (CAPP) services.
• Protect sensitive content in outgoing emails with Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and easy-to-use email encryption, all in one solution.
• Gain maximum deployment flexibility with a cloud, virtual, on-premises, or hybrid deployment or move to the cloud in phases.

Features and Benefits:

Today’s email security threats consist of ransomware, advanced malware, BEC, phishing, and spam. Cisco Email Security technology blocks threats so that companies receive only legitimate messages. Cisco uses multiple layers to provide the utmost in comprehensive email security, incorporating preventive and reactive measures to strengthen your defense.

Following are the major capabilities of the email security solutions.

Global Threat Intelligence

Get fast, comprehensive email protection backed by Talos, one of the largest threat detection networks in the world. Talos provides broad visibility and a large footprint, including:

• 600 billion emails per day
• 16 billion web requests per day
• 1.5 million malware samples

Talos provides a 24-hour view into global traffic activity. It analyzes anomalies, uncovers new threats, and monitors traffic trends. Talos helps prevent zero-hour attacks by continually generating rules that feed updates to customers’ email security solutions. These updates occur every three to five minutes, delivering industry-leading threat defense.

Reputation filtering

Block unwanted email with reputation filtering, which is based on threat intelligence from Talos. For each embedded hyperlink, a reputation check is performed to verify the integrity of the source. Websites with known bad reputations are automatically blocked. Reputation filtering stops 90 percent of spam before it even enters your network, allowing the solution to scale by analyzing a much smaller payload.

Spam protection

Spam is a complex problem that demands a sophisticated solution. Cisco makes it easy. Cisco Email Security blocks unwanted emails using a multilayered scanning architecture delivering the highest spam catch rate of greater than 99 percent, with a false-positive rate of a less than a one in one million.

The antispam functionality in Cisco Email Security uses the Cisco Context Adaptive Scanning Engine (CASE). This engine examines the complete context of a message, including what content the message contains, how the message is constructed, who is sending the message, and where the call to action of the message takes you. By combining these elements, Cisco Email Security stops the broadest range of threats with industry-leading accuracy.

Forged email detection

Forged email detection protects against BEC attacks focused on executives, who are considered high-value targets. Forged-email detection helps you block these customized attacks and provides detailed logs on all attempts and actions taken.

Cisco Advanced Phishing Protection

CAPP stops identity deception–based attacks such as social engineering, imposters, and BEC by combining global Cisco Talos threat intelligence with local email intelligence and advanced machine learning techniques to model trusted email behavior on the Internet, within organizations and between individuals.

• Integrates machine learning techniques to drive daily model updates, maintaining a real-time understanding of email behavior to stop identity deception.
• Combines rapid Domain Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance (DMARC), advanced display name protection, and look-alike domain imposter–driven detection to stop BEC attacks.
• Models account takeover threat behavior to block attacks originating from compromised email accounts.
• Deploys as a lightweight sensor via the cloud or on-premises in the customer’s environment as a hosted Virtual Machine (VM) of choice or bare-metal installs. A cloud-based sensor is provisioned as part of Cisco Cloud Email Security deployment.
• Supports dual-delivery mode. In this mode, the sensor accepts copies of email messages over Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and extracts metadata in a streaming fashion.

Cisco Domain Protection

CDP for external email helps prevent phishing emails from being sent using a customer domain(s). It automates the process of implementing the DMARC email authentication standard to better protect employees, customers, and suppliers from phishing attacks using a customer domain(s). This protects the customers’ brand identity as well as increases email marketing effectiveness by reducing phishing messages from reaching inboxes.

Virus defense

By offering a high-performance virus scanning solution integrated at the gateway, Cisco Email Security provides a multilayered, multivendor approach to virus filtering.

Graymail detection and safe unsubscribe

Graymail consists of marketing, social networking, and bulk messages. The graymail detection feature precisely classifies and monitors graymail entering an organization. An administrator can then take appropriate action on each category. Often graymail has an unsubscribe link where end users can indicate to the sender that they would like to opt out of receiving such emails. Since mimicking a unsubscribe mechanism is a popular phishing technique, users should be wary of clicking these unsubscribe links.

The safe unsubscribe solution provides:

• Protection against malicious threats masquerading as unsubscribe links.
• A uniform interface for managing all subscriptions.

Better visibility for email administrators and end users into such emails.

Cisco Advanced Malware Protection and Cisco Threat Grid

AMP and Threat Grid provide file reputation scoring and blocking, file sandboxing, and file retrospection for continuous analysis of threats. Users can block more attacks, track suspicious files, mitigate the scope of an outbreak, and remediate quickly. Cisco Email Security also integrates with AMP for Endpoints. AMP for Endpoints shares threat intelligence across a customer’s entire environment, unifying security across endpoints, network, email, the cloud, and the web. Through these integrations, AMP automatically correlates files, telemetry data, behavior, and activity to proactively defend against advanced threats across all possible vectors.

Mailbox Auto-Remediation for Office 365 customers helps remediate breaches faster and with less effort. Customers simply set their email security solution to take automatic actions on those infected emails.

Customers can purchase an additional license to deploy their AMP system completely on-premises with the AMP private cloud. This, along with Threat Grid, brings the entire AMP offering completely on-premises.

URL-related protection and control

Users are protected against malicious URLs with URL filtering, scanning of URLs in attachments, and managed (shortened) URLs. Appropriate policies are applied to the messages based on the reputation or category of the URLs.

Outbreak filters

Outbreak filters defend against emerging threats and blended attacks. They can issue rules on any combination of six parameters, including file type, file name, file size, and URLs in a message. As Talos learns more about an outbreak, it can modify rules and release messages from quarantine accordingly. Outbreak filters can also rewrite URLs linked in suspicious messages. When clicked, the new URLs redirect the recipient through the Cisco Web Security proxy.

The website content is then actively scanned, and outbreak filters will display a block screen to the user if the site contains malware.

Web interaction tracking

Web interaction tracking is a fully integrated solution that allows IT administrators to track the end users who click on URLs that have been rewritten by Cisco Email Security. Reports show:

• Top users who clicked on malicious URLs.
• The top malicious URLs clicked by end users.

Date and time, rewrite reason, and action taken on the URLs.

Data security for sensitive content in outgoing emails

DLP

Protect outbound messages with Cisco Email Security DLP. Comply with industry and government regulations worldwide and prevent confidential data from leaving your network. Choose from an extensive policy library of more than 100 expert policies covering government, private sector, and company-specific regulations. The predefined DLP policies are included with Cisco Email Security and simplify the application of content-aware outbound email policy. Remediation choices include encrypting, adding footers and disclaimers, adding Blind Carbon Copies (BCCs), notifying, and quarantining. For companies needing a complex custom policy, the building blocks of the predefined policies are readily available to make the process quick and easy.

Encryption

Give senders control of their content, even after messages have been sent. With email encryption, senders don’t fear mistyped recipient addresses, mistakes in content, or time-sensitive emails because they can always lock a message. The sender of an encrypted message receives a read receipt once a recipient opens a message, and highly secure replies and forwards are automatically encrypted to maintain end-to-end privacy and control. There is no additional infrastructure to deploy. For enhanced security, message content goes straight from your gateway to the recipient, and only the encryption key is stored in the cloud.

Meet encryption requirements for regulations such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)—as well as state privacy regulations and European directives—without burdening the senders, recipients, or email administrators. Offer encryption not as a mandate but as a service that’s easy to use and gives the sender complete control.

Manageability

Universal device support

Make sure all users can access messages when needed, regardless of whether they are on smartphones, tablets, laptops, or desktop computers. Universal device support is designed to ensure that highly secure messages can be read by any recipient, no matter what device is used to open the message. Dedicated plug-in applications offer an enhanced user experience for Microsoft Outlook and on Apple iOS and Google Android smartphones and tablets.

System overview dashboard

Monitor and report on outbound messages from a centralized, custom system overview dashboard. Unified business reporting offers a single view for comprehensive insight across your organization. Get the details of any report for advanced visibility.

Detailed message tracking

Track a message by envelope recipient, envelope sender, subject, attachments, and message events including DLP policy or IDs. When you send a message to Cisco Email Security, the message tracking database is populated within a minute or two, and you can see what happened to the messages that are crossing the system at every step of processing.

Specifications:

Email Security Virtual Appliance Specifications

	Model	Disk	Memory	Cores
Evaluations only	ESAV C000v	200 GB (10K RPM SAS)	4 GB	1 (2.7 GHz)
Small enterprise (up to 1000 employees)	ESAV C100v	200 GB (10K RPM SAS)	6 GB	2 (2.7 GHz)
Medium-sized enterprise (up to 5000 employees)	ESAV C300v	500 GB (10K RPM SAS)	8 GB	4 (2.7 GHz)
Large enterprise or service provider	ESAV C600v	500 GB (10K RPM SAS)	8 GB	8 (2.7 GHz)
Servers
Cisco UCS	VMware ESXi 6.0 and 6.5 Hypervisor

Secure Management Appliance M-Series Platform Specifications

Model	SMA M695/690	SMA M395/390	SMA M195/190
Number of users	10,000 or more	Up to 10,000	Up to 1,000

Virtual machine hardware requirements for Cisco Advanced Phishing Protection on-premises sensor deployment

Operating system	CPU	Memory	Disk	Network	Docker
Modern, 64-bit Linux: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 or later CentOS 7.4 or later Ubuntu 16 or later	Intel or AMD x 86_64 8 cores	16 GB minimum 32 GB Recommended	The following minimum allocations: /var/opt/agari/: 100 GB /opt/agari/: 20 GB /var/lib/docker: 20 GB	1 Gbit/sec recommended	17.06 or later

Where to Deploy:

All Cisco Email Security deployments options share a simple approach to implementation. The system setup wizard can handle even complex environments and will have you up and protected in just minutes, making you safer faster. Licensing is user based, not device based, so you can apply it per user instead of per device to provide inbound as well as outbound email gateway protection at no additional cost.

Cloud

Cisco Email Security in the cloud provides you with a flexible deployment model for email security. It helps you reduce costs with co-management and no onsite email security infrastructure. Dedicated email security deployments in multiple resilient Cisco data centers provide the highest levels of service availability and data protection. Customers retain access to (and visibility of) the cloud infrastructure, and comprehensive reporting and message tracking helps assure administrative flexibility. This service is all inclusive, with software, computing power, and support bundled for simplicity.

Virtual

The Cisco Email Security Virtual Appliance significantly lowers the cost of deploying email security, especially in highly distributed networks. This appliance lets your network manager create instances where and when they are needed, using your existing network infrastructure. A software version of the physical appliance runs on top of a VMware ESXi hypervisor and Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®) servers. You receive an unlimited license for the virtual appliance with the purchase of any Cisco Email Security software bundle.

With the virtual appliance, you can respond instantly to increasing traffic growth with simplified capacity planning. You don’t need to buy and ship appliances, so you can support new business opportunities without adding complexity to a data center or having to hire additional staff.

On-premises

The Cisco Email Security Appliance is a gateway typically deployed in a network edge outside the firewall (the so-called demilitarized zone). Incoming SMTP traffic is directed to the appliance’s data interface according to specifications set by your mail exchange records. The appliance filters it and redelivers it to your network mail server. Your mail server also directs outgoing mail to the data interface, where it is filtered according to outgoing policies and then delivered to external destinations.

Hybrid

The hybrid solution provides you with maximum flexibility. You can mix any deployment options to best suit your needs. For example, you can take advantage of Cisco Email Security in the cloud to protect against threats in incoming messages while deploying outbound control of sensitive messages onsite. You can also choose to deploy inbound threat protection on-premises and in the cloud to transition to the cloud at your own pace.

You can also run on-premises and virtual Cisco Email Security in the same deployment. So your small branch offices or remote locations can have the same protection you get at headquarters without the need to install and support hardware at those locations. You can easily manage custom deployments with the Cisco Content Security Management Appliance or Cisco Content Security Management Virtual Appliance.

Licenses:

There are three email security software bundles: Cisco Email Security Inbound Essentials, Cisco Email Security Outbound Essentials, and Cisco Email Security Premium; add-on standalone options are also available. Just purchase the appropriate licenses for the number of mailboxes you need to support. For cloud and virtual appliances, simply order the software licenses to get entitlement.

Term-Based Subscription Licenses
Licenses are term-based subscriptions of one, three, or five years.

Quantity-Based Subscription Licenses
The Cisco Email Security portfolio uses tiered pricing based on the number of mailboxes. Sales and partner representatives will help to determine the correct customer deployment.

The major components of each software offering are:

Bundles	Description
Cisco Email Security Inbound Essentials	The Cisco Email Security Inbound Essentials bundle delivers protection against email-based threats and includes antispam, graymail detection, Sophos antivirus solution, outbreak filters, and forged email detection.
Cisco Email Security Outbound Essentials	The Cisco Email Security Outbound Essentials bundle guards against data loss with DLP compliance, email encryption, and clustering.
Cisco Email Security Inbound Essentials plus Cisco Advanced Malware Protection and Cisco Threat Grid	The Cisco Email Security Inbound Essentials bundle delivers protection against email-based threats and includes antispam, graymail detection, Sophos antivirus solution, outbreak filters, and forged email detection. AMP can be purchased along with any Cisco Email Security software bundle. Threat Grid and AMP augments the malware detection and blocking capabilities already offered in Cisco Email Security with file reputation scoring and blocking, sandboxing, and file retrospection for continuous analysis of threats, even after they have traversed the email gateway. AMP and Threat Grid can now be deployed completely on-premises with Cisco AMP Private Cloud Virtual Appliance. This is important for customers who have stringent policy requirements that do not allow for use of the AMP public cloud.
Cisco Email Security Outbound Essentials	The Cisco Email Security Outbound Essentials bundle guards against data loss with DLP compliance and email encryption.
Cisco Email Security Premium	The Cisco Email Security Premium bundle combines the inbound and outbound protections included in the Cisco Email Security Inbound and Outbound Essentials licenses noted above for protection against email-based threats and essential DLP and encryption.
Cisco Email Security Premium plus Cisco Advanced Malware Protection and Cisco Threat Grid	The Cisco Email Security Premium bundle combines the inbound and outbound protections included in the Cisco Email Security Inbound and Outbound Essentials licenses noted above for protection against email-based threats and essential DLP and encryption. AMP can be purchased along with any Cisco Email Security software bundle. Threat Grid and AMP augments the malware detection and blocking capabilities already offered in Cisco Email Security with file reputation scoring and blocking, sandboxing, and file retrospection for continuous analysis of threats, even after they have traversed the email gateway. AMP and Threat Grid can now be deployed completely on-premises with Cisco AMP Private Cloud Virtual Appliance. This is important for customers who have stringent policy requirements that do not allow for use of the AMP public cloud.
Standalone Offerings	Description
Cisco Advanced Malware Protection and Cisco Threat Grid	AMP can be purchased along with any Cisco Email Security software bundle. Threat Grid and AMP augments the malware detection and blocking capabilities already offered in Cisco Email Security with file reputation scoring and blocking, sandboxing, and file retrospection for continuous analysis of threats, even after they have traversed the email gateway. AMP and Threat Grid can now be deployed completely on-premises with Cisco AMP Private Cloud Virtual Appliance. This is important for customers who have stringent policy requirements that do not allow for use of the AMP public cloud.
Intelligent Multi-Scan	Intelligent Multi-Scan (IMS) is a high performant multi-layer anti-spam solution that uses a combination of anti-spam engines, including Cisco Anti-Spam, to increase spam catch rates. You cannot configure the order of the scanning engines used in Cisco Intelligent Multi-Scan; Cisco Anti-Spam will always be the last to scan a message and Cisco Intelligent Multi-Scan will not skip it if a third-party engine determines that a message is spam. Using Cisco Intelligent Multi-Scan can lead to reduced system throughput. Please contact your Cisco support representative for more information. To use the updated IMS engine, you must add the IMS feature key and accept the license in your appliance. For the existing IMS users, all the mail policies for IMS are migrated to work seamlessly with the updated IMS engine.
Graymail safe-unsubscribe	Graymail now can be tagged with a truly safe unsubscribe option. This tag manages a highly secure unsubscribe action on behalf of the end user. It also monitors the different graymail unsubscribe requests. All these can be managed at a policy, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) group level.
Cisco Advanced Phishing Protection	CAPP can be purchased along with any Cisco Email Security software bundles. CAPP stops identity deception–based attacks such as social engineering, imposters, and BEC. It provides local email intelligence and advanced machine learning techniques to model trusted email behavior on the Internet, within organizations and between individuals. CAPP also integrates machine learning techniques to drive daily model updates, maintaining a real-time understanding of email behavior to stop identity deception. Offered only for one and three year subscriptions.
Cisco Domain Protection	CDP can be purchased along with any Cisco Email Security software bundle. CDP for external email helps prevent phishing emails from being sent using a customer domain(s). The CDP service automates the process of implementing the email authentication standard DMARC to better protect employees, customers, and suppliers from phishing attacks using a customer domain(s). This protects the customers’ brand identity as well as increases email marketing effectiveness by reducing phishing messages from reaching inboxes. Offered only for one and three year subscriptions.
Image Analyzer	Detects illicit content in incoming and outgoing email, allowing customers to identify, monitor, and educate offending users.
McAfee AntiVirus	Offers McAfee antivirus scanning technology.

Software License Agreements
Three Cisco Email The Cisco End-User License Agreement is provided with each software license purchase.

Software Subscription Support
All email security licenses include software subscription support that is essential to keeping business-critical applications available, highly secure, and operating at peak performance. This support entitles you to the services listed below for the full term of the purchased software subscription.

• Software updates and major upgrades keep applications performing at their best, with the most current features.
• The Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) provides fast, specialized support.
• Online tools build and expand in-house expertise and boost business agility.
• Collaborative learning provides additional knowledge and training opportunities.

Documentation:

Download the Cisco Email Security Advanced Email Protection Data Sheet (PDF).