Imagine this: you have hardened every laptop in your fleet with real-time telemetry, rapid separation and automatic rollback. However, corporate mailboxes (the front doors of most attackers) are still protected by virtually 1990s filters.
This is not a balanced approach. Email remains the main vector of violations, but is treated as a static stream of messages rather than as a dynamic, post-delivery environment. This environment is rich in OAuth tokens, shared drive links, and years of sensitive data.
The conversation needs to be shifted. You should stop asking, “Did the Gateway block something bad?” Then they begin to ask, “How quickly can you be trapped, contain and undo the damage?”
Looking at email security through this lens enforces a fundamental shift towards the same assumption breaches, detection and response mindset that revolutionized the already revolutionary endpoint protection.
The day the wall fell
Most security experts know statistics. Phishing and qualification theft continue to control violation reports, and the financial impact of business email compromises often outweigh ransomware. However, the data tells a more interesting story that reflects the decline in legacy virus countermeasures.
Ten years ago, AVs were good at catching known threats, but zero-day exploits and new malware slid the past. Endpoint detection and response (EDR) appeared because the team needed visibility after the attacker was already on the machine.
The email follows the same script. Secure Email Gateways (Segs) filter spam and commodity phishing campaigns appropriately. What they miss is the attacks that define the modern threat situation.
Malicious links weaponized after the acquisition of a delivery account using stolen credentials that contain none other Payload Business Email Compromise (BEC) malware
If a single mailbox is compromised, an attacker can access connected graphs for OAUTH applications, shared files, chat history, and calendar invitations within Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. Moving this graph horizontally rarely triggers another SEG alert. Damage occurs entirely within the crowd workspace.
What email security can learn from endpoints
In the endpoint world, breakthroughs were not a better blacklist. The recognition that prevention should be paired with continuous visibility and fast, automated responses. The EDR platform provided the ability to record process tree, registry changes, and network calls. Once a threat is detected, the host can be isolated and all changes can be returned from a single console.
Now imagine giving the email administrator the same superpower. Messages, OAuth scopes, and file sharing rewind buttons. The ability to freeze – or at least the MFA Challenge – creates risky rules instantly. And a timeline showing who reads sensitive threads after credentials are stolen.
This combination of features is what modern EDR-like approaches to email security offer. This is a simple idea. Suppose an attacker will eventually land in a mailbox and build the tools needed to detect, investigate and contain fallout.
The API-first moment that made it possible
For years, we have needed a vulnerable journaling configuration or heavyweight endpoint agent that requires post-delivery controls to email. Cloud Suite quietly resolved this issue.
Microsoft Graph and Google’s Workspace API light up the telemetry you need (Mailbox Audit Log, Message ID, Event Sharing, Permission Changes) against oauth. The same API that provides visibility also provides control. You can cancel tokens, subtract messages delivered from all inboxes, and delete forwarding rules in seconds.
The sensors and actuators are already burned into the platform. You need to connect them to a workflow that feels like EDR. As discussed in our post, regarding the evolution of email security, this richness of telemetry allows security teams to move beyond the tuning mall of filter rules. Instead of waiting for users to report Phish, the platform can notice impossible travel sign-in, allowing your account to quickly create five new shared links and automatically correct the risk.
This is why it’s important for lean security teams
SMEs are often the whole security department, juggling vulnerability management, incident response and compliance. Tool sprawl is the enemy.
An EDR-like approach to email disrupts several fragmented controls on a single surface, including SEG policy, DLP, incident response playbooks, and SAAS-SAAS surveillance. There are no agents to modify or deploy MX records, and no user dependencies. Click the Report Phish button.
More importantly, it generates important metrics. Instead of citing any “catch rate,” you can use specific data to answer board-level questions.
How quickly do you detect compromised mailboxes? How much sensitive data was accessible before containment? How many dangerous OAuth grants have been cancelled this quarter?
These numbers explain actual risk reduction rather than the theoretical filter effectiveness.
Practical ways to move forward
This doesn’t have to be an abstract exercise. The forward path is incremental, and each step provides tangible security benefits.
Enables native audit logs. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace include extensive logging. This is the fundamental truth needed for future automation. Centralize telemetry. Start looking for a compromise signal on your SIEM or logging platform. Suddenly creating email rules, downloading large numbers of files, unusual sign-in locations, new OAuth grants. Test automated responses. Test “message clawback” in a phishing simulation using the native API. Both Microsoft Graphs and the Gmail API provide these endpoints from the box. We evaluate dedicated platforms. We will judge them about their broad coverage, their post-compromise playbook refinement, and speed between detection and automated action.
This journey turns speculation into evidence, violates cases that include live violations, and maintains human efforts proportional to the size of the team.
Conclusion
No one in 2025 will argue that Endpoint Isleslis is enough. We build for detection and response as we assume that prevention will ultimately be bypassed. Email deserves the same practical approach.
Of course, inbound detection remains important. But if the security stack can’t read sensitive contracts after a mailbox acquisition or automatically prevent its exposure, you’re still working in the anti-virus era. The attacker went ahead. Like a laptop, your inbox is ready for upgrades.
Where Material Security Conforms
Material security was built on the assumptions investigated here. Email is a dynamic, high value environment that requires protection after delivery, as well as separate pre-delivery filters.
Materials are integrated directly with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace via native APIs, so deployments do not require months and email flows to be confused.
Once connected, the material records the same fine particle telemetry (all mailbox rules, OAuth grants, file sharing, and sign-in events) that drives the EDR to the endpoint, then records layers in an automated playbook that shrinks the violation window from days to minutes. Suspicious sign-in can trigger just the time MFA challenge, but delivered fish will claw back into all inboxes before being read. Historic emails are wrapped in zero-knowledge encryption that forces re-authentication, so stolen credentials alone cannot unlock sensitive data for years.
Perhaps most importantly, for one security team, collapse these controls into a single searchable timeline. You can answer board-level questions. What did you access? Who saw it? How quickly did you contain it?
In short, the material “estimates violations, detects faster, responds faster, brings the spirit of modern endpoint defense to your inbox, turning emails from perennial blind spots into fully monitored, rapidly recoverable assets.
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