Improving email security with Amazon SES Mail Manager and Hornetsecurity’s Vade Advanced Email Security Add On

Email continues to be a critical communication channel for businesses, powering essential communications across time zones and locations. But as cyber threats grow more sophisticated, how can organizations protect their most vulnerable communication channel? With the increasing complexity of email-based security risks, businesses need robust solutions to safeguard their digital communications. Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Hornetsecurity’s Vade Advanced Email Security Add On for Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) Mail Manager, a powerful new tool in the fight against email-borne threats.

Amazon SES: Powering email communication at scale

Amazon SES is a cloud-based email service that helps you automate high-volume email communications seamlessly. In May 2024, we launched Mail Manager, introducing email relay and gateway features that help you manage email traffic, ensure compliance and enforce corporate policies. The launch also included an introduction to Mail Manager Email Add Ons which provides optional access to a collection of powerful security tools from certified providers that help you manage and filter incoming emails. Add Ons from our partners deliver advanced email security with flexible, meter-based pricing that is easily activated and integrated into your email workflows directly from the Mail Manager console or Mail Manager APIs.

In this blog, we’ll introduce Hornetsecurity’s Vade Email Add On for Amazon SES Mail Manager, and demonstrate how to enable its advanced email security capabilities to help protect your critical email communications.

Introducing the Vade Email Add On by Hornet Security

Hornetsecurity, a global leader in email security, produces next-generation cloud-based security, compliance, backup, and security awareness solutions that help companies and organizations of all sizes around the world. Its email filters process billions of emails daily, using a vast global email database to power their artificial intelligence (AI) engine. This approach allows the Vade Email Add On to continuously refine and adapt to the latest email threats and filter-bypassing techniques.

The Vade Email Add On brings Vade’s expertise directly to you, providing a seamless and powerful email security solution within the familiar AWS environment:

“Enhance your email service with advanced cybersecurity capabilities by integrating Vade Email Security’s state-of-the-art filtering solution. This Add On empowers users with automated, real-time defense against spam, malware, and phishing—ensuring safer communication. Vade’s AI-powered technology employs a multi-layered approach—combining heuristics, behavioral analysis, and natural language processing—to analyze messages in real time. Strengthen your platform by ensuring ongoing protection against evolving cyber threats.”

Advanced Email Security with the Vade Add On for Mail Manager

Hornetsecurity’s Vade Add On for Mail Manager provides automated, real-time defense against spam, malware, and phishing, which help ensure safer communication, including:

• Advanced Threat Detection: Identifies and blocks sophisticated phishing attempts, malware, and ransomware, providing comprehensive protection against a wide range of cyber threats.
• Behavioral Analysis: Examines the behavior patterns of message senders and content based on over 130 potential data points in each message to detect anomalies and potential threats.
• Patented AI Technology: Leverages proprietary AI algorithms to analyze communication patterns and detect misuse of your service’s digital assets. This technology is powered by our global network of over 1 billion protected mailboxes.
• Real-Time Scanning: Instantly analyze attachments without delaying delivery, thanks to its real time code interpreter.
• Ease of Use: Seamless integration with Mail Manager rules, scanning only messages that meet specific criteria.

The Vade Email Add-On integrates with Mail Manager’s rules engine. This engine routes messages based on Vade’s scan results and optional detailed verdicts. These verdicts enable precise categorization and handling of incoming emails, improving security and email management.

Configure the Vade Email Add On

In the following example, we’ll walk thru the steps needed to subscribe and configure a rule set with two rules that are processed in priority order:

• Rule 1 – drop-all-malicious-emails This rule has a condition that uses Vade to scan all incoming email and identify messages that are malicious (contain malware or phishing). These messages are then processed by Rule 1’s “Drop action“. Messages that are deemed “safe” are passed to Rule 2 after automatically being inspected and marked as “likely to be spam”, or “not-spam”.
• Rule 2 – forward-to-mailbox Messages passed into Rule 2 are immediately forwarded to the user’s mailbox. In our example, we’re using Amazon WorkMail and Mail Manager’s built-in “Deliver to mailbox” action.
  • The Vade Add On also distinguishes between spam and clean email, and automatically adds a corresponding header to each message (see below) that can be used to route spam into the user’s “junk” folder.
    • X-SES-Vade-Advanced-Email-Security-AddonVerdict: spam:high
  • Thanks to the seamless integration between Mail Manager Add Ons and WorkMail, messages marked as spam are automatically sent to the user’s Junk folder, enhancing both security and user experience.

Follow the steps below to configure the Vade Email Add On using the Amazon SES console for the simple mail flow described above (note – the SES Mail Manager API can be used in lieu of the console).

1. Open the Amazon SES console and in the left navigation rail, expand Mail Manager and click Email Add Ons.
2. Select the Vade Add On, read the description. Click Subscribe and read the Terms and Conditions. Click Subscribe again to activate the Vade Advanced Email Security Add On in your SES account.
   • Pricing is detailed in the Email Add On description page. When this blog was published the price per 1,000 emails processed = $0.415 USD (subject to change, please refer to SES Pricing for the most up to date information).

3. In the left navigation rail under Mail Manager, click Rule Sets.
4. Create a new Rule set ( process-via-vade ) (or modify an existing Rule set).
   1. Create a rule ( drop-all-malicious-emails )
   2. Under Rule conditions, click select property and select Vade Advanced Email Security Category from the drop-down menu (note the property modifiers allow for increasingly detailed inspection / results for the scan).
   3. Click the Select operator drop-down and select Equals from the menu.
   4. Click the Value drop-down and select Phishing and Malware.
   5. Under Actions, select Drop action to stop processing and discard messages that are found to be malicious.

5. Create rule ( forward-to-mailbox ) to process messages that were passed along by Rule 1.
6. Under Actions, select Deliver to mailbox (note – if not using Amazon WorkMail, you would select a previously configured SMTPRelay action to send messages to your inbox provider. See this blog for more info).
   1. Provide your WorkMail ARN
   2. Select an IAM role that has permission for SES Mail Manager to access to your WorkMail mailbox

7. Save the Rule set (it will look like this):

8. To use this new Rule set, add it to an active Mail Manager Ingress endpoint. When you click save, the Ingress endpoint will begin using the new Rule set immediately.

The Vade Add-On’s rule conditions (below) enable granular control of email routing. When combined with customizable actions, these rules create an automated email handling system that matches your business needs.

Conclusion

Hornetsecurity’s Vade Email Add On for Amazon SES Mail Manager represents a significant step forward in email security for Amazon SES Mail Manager customers. By combining an advanced artificial intelligence (AI)-driven security engine with the powerful management capabilities of Mail Manager, you can enhance your defense against email-borne threats while maintaining precise control over your email workflows.

Get started today and take your email security to the next level with the Vade Add On for Amazon SES Mail Manager

We encourage you to try the Vade Add On for Amazon SES Mail Manager and experience the benefits of enhanced email security firsthand. To learn more about implementation details and best practices, please visit:

• Amazon SES Mail Manager documentation
• How Amazon SES Mail Manager Elevates Email Security and Efficiency
• Email Archiving with Mail Manager: Why To Archive In Transit vs At The Mailbox
• How to use SES Mail Manager SMTP Relay action to deliver inbound email to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365
• Email Journaling with SES Mail Manager
• How Amazon SES Mail Manager customers can prevent EchoSpoofing
• Modernize email sending with Amazon Simple Email Service and Proofpoint SER

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