Integrated Cloud Email Security (ICES)

Protect M365 with AI-powered ICES: advanced, cloud-based email security using multilayered machine learning analysis, API-native integration, augmenting EOP and Defender.

AI-powered detection stops sophisticated phishing and email threats.

Real-time protection and instant inbox threat removal with malicious URL blocking.

Adaptive, integrated solution outpaces traditional defenses and enhances Microsoft 365 security.

Unsafe email banners alert users, strengthening awareness and reducing successful attacks.

What is Integrated Cloud Email Security (ICES)?

Integrated Cloud Email Security (ICES) goes beyond traditional email protection. It delivers a modern defense built for today’s increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, where email remains the entry point for 96% of breaches. In a cloud-first world, organizations can no longer rely on legacy safeguards. The urgency for smarter, more adaptive email security has never been greater, and ICES is leading the way in redefining how businesses protect their most critical communications.

AI-powered phishing protection that stops threats before they reach your inbox.

  • Seamless Integration: Connects directly with existing email servers (e.g., Outlook 365).
  • Complete Protection: Scans every email and attachment in real time.
  • AI-Driven Security: Detects advanced and emerging email threats.
  • Smart Handling: Suspicious emails are quarantined for review or removed automatically.
  • Safe Delivery: Only verified, legitimate emails reach the recipient’s inbox.

Evolutionary factors behind the drive to ICES

The development of Integrated Cloud Email Security has been driven by a pressing need to identify complex, evasive, and emerging email threats. Conventional email security, i.e., Security Email Gateways (SEGs), is no longer able to handle email-based attacks that utilize AI.

AI-assisted phishing

Machine learning enables the system to recognize attack patterns and adapt to new tactics, ensuring even emerging and zero-day threats are detected and stopped.

Evasive tactics

Phishing tactics have also evolved in recent years, with cybercriminals creating phishing campaigns that utilize evasive tactics that circumvent the detection of conventional SEGs. Tactics include the use of QR codes that conceal malicious links and the deployment of multipart phishing scams that employ social engineering to manipulate employees.

One highly evasive phishing campaign behind the Business Email Compromise scam is the W3LL phishing kit. The Phishing-as-a-Service (PaaS) kit allows cybercriminals to bypass Microsoft’s MFA and applies obfuscation methods for email headers and body text to evade detection by SEGs.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) workarounds

MFA bypasses are increasingly common. Techniques include the use of infostealer malware to intercept session cookies, causing MFA fatigue using MFA bombing, and social engineering.

Conventional SEGs like native Microsoft 365 security miss these increasingly complex and evasive email threats. A report by TitanHQ and Osterman Research found that 79% of organizations experienced at least one cybersecurity incident, even with a security layer on top of M365. Notably, 79% of respondents also stated that email security solutions incorporating defensive AI are “very important” or “extremely important” to their cybersecurity posture.

ICES, as an AI-powered email security solution, represents the next generation in augmenting or replacing conventional email security.

AI technologies powering ICES email threat prevention

Email is weaponized by cybercriminals, who use it to carry out attacks that involve credential theft, Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams, account takeovers, fraud, and phishing and spear phishing. The utilization of AI is taking the weaponization of email to new levels of sophistication. Attacks are evasive, multi-part, and personalized. ICES uses defensive AI to counteract these complex email-borne attacks.
AI-powered ICES uses the following layers of technologies to counteract email-borne attacks:

AI-driven threat intelligence

Machine learning provides the technical capability needed for the protection system to learn and identify patterns in attack tactics, technologies, and processes. This ongoing learning, as used by ML, means that even emerging attacks and zero-day threats can be identified and prevented.

Natural language processing (NLP):

This type of AI is used to identify threats such as social engineering and multi-part phishing campaigns. The NLP engine analyzes email content, looking for indicators of compromise that are formed around specific language patterns.

Real-time threat analysis

AI-driven anti-phishing can be used to examine malicious links in an email and verify the website the links direct to. If the website is found to be legitimate, the email will be released to the user’s inbox.

URL rewriting and analysis

URL analysis is used to validate the security of a URL against multiple curated anti-phishing feeds. We provide time-of-click protection by inspecting and rewriting all URLs to detect links to malicious sites, ensuring safety against harmful URLs.

Link Lock service

A service that ensures the company remains protected even if a recipient clicks a URL in a malicious email.

Data loss prevention (DLP)

Prevents sensitive data from leaving the corporate network, even if it is done accidentally or maliciously.

Auto Remediation

Acts as an additional layer of risk mitigation and enhanced protection.

Email archiving

Compliant with fast search and email hold.

Security awareness training and phishing simulations

Training for all employees to help them identify phishing and change risky security behaviors.

DNS filtering

Helps to block malware, phishing sites, and risky content at the network level

M365 and Entra ID backup and recovery

One-click granular backup and recovery for the Microsoft environment.

Benefits of using Integrated Cloud Email Security (ICES)

When moving from a Secure Email Gateway to ICES, an organization should expect to benefit from ease of use, rapid deployment, and security intelligence:

Augment and enhance, not replace

ICES adds capabilities to existing email platforms. ICES solutions use advanced security to enhance any existing conventional security layers in an email server. ICES adds AI capabilities to conventional SEGs. Deep integration with existing email systems, such as Microsoft 365, ensures that the built-in security, including Microsoft Defender and EOP, is enhanced with defensive AI capabilities.

Rapid deployment means fast protection

API-based integration is straightforward. There is no need to reroute email or reconfigure MX records. Machine learning is used to detect emerging threats and zero-day threats.

Human-centered threat prevention

Integrated security awareness training is included in some ICES offerings. Employees receive contextual training that helps them identify phishing attacks and modify risky behavior.

Security intelligence

The data captured during detection and prevention by an ICES service can be fed into SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) platforms to generate insights into the threat landscape, helping a company improve its security posture.

Many ICES solutions are delivered using a managed service provider (MSP). These solutions are cloud-based and managed using a centralized, multi-tenant console.

Email security is complex. Cybercriminals are increasingly integrating the capabilities of AI into email-borne attacks. Conventional email security gateways can no longer detect these sophisticated, often evasive cyberattacks. The entry of Integrated Cloud Email Security solutions into the market means that AI-assisted cyber-attacks can be detected and prevented.

Redefining Email Security

CyberSentriq is redefining email security with its Integrated Cloud Email Security (ICES) solution. Powered by advanced AI and machine learning, ICES detects sophisticated threats, including BEC, social engineering, and lateral phishing, that slip past traditional defenses.

By combining behavioral AI with a people-centric model, ICES adapts protection to an organization’s most at-risk users. Real-time contextual banners further boost awareness, warning users of suspicious emails as they arrive. This cloud-native approach delivers accurate threat detection, fewer false positives, and uninterrupted business communications, ensuring organizations stay secure against evolving email-based attacks.

CyberSentriq offers four unified solution bundles that offer AI-powered ICES.

Choose from four security bundles: Comply, Protect, Shield, and Complete, to ensure your company has the best possible solution to prevent email from being used to attack your organization.