Email security that stops phishing and business-email compromise.

What is email security and why is it more than antivirus on an inbox?

Email security is the layer that screens every incoming message before it reaches your inbox - not just the ones with obvious viruses attached. Modern phishing rarely ships a malicious attachment. The dangerous ones are the ones that look like a vendor invoice update, a CEO wire-transfer request, or a DocuSign login page - clean-looking emails whose only payload is convincing a person to click, reply, or wire money. Catching those is what email security is for.

If you already have Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, you have some email security. The built-ins catch the obvious spam and the known-bad attachments. What they tend to miss is the credential-phishing and impersonation category - emails that look like ordinary business correspondence but are designed to steal passwords or redirect a wire transfer. NHM's managed layer sits in front of your existing mailbox and adds that category of defense, plus the human triage when something is borderline.

Related: Managed IT Security, What is phishing

Will it catch the phishing I'm actually seeing - including the ones without attachments or links?

Yes, that is the category email security exists for. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center tracks business email compromise as one of the highest-loss cybercrime categories every year - typically several billion dollars in adjusted losses across all reported cases in the United States. The attackers have moved away from malware attachments because mail filters catch those. The ones who get through use sender-impersonation, look-alike domains, and convincing plain-text messages with no payload except a phone number to call back or a wire instruction to update.

NHM's managed layer uses behavioral analysis and sender-impersonation detection to catch those - not just antivirus. When a message looks suspicious but is not technically malicious, it goes to a quarantine the recipient can review and the admin can release. When a message looks like impersonation of a known sender - your CEO, your vendor, your bank - the system flags it before the user ever sees it.

Related: AI-powered phishing in 2026

Will this conflict with Microsoft 365's built-in Defender / Exchange Online Protection?

It is designed to sit alongside it, not replace it. Most of our clients keep their existing Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace mailboxes and add NHM's managed layer in front. Deployment is staged: we configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records for your sending domain, point the MX record at the managed layer, validate that mail is still flowing, and only then cut over the inbound routing. The whole sequence typically takes one to two weeks end-to-end, depending on how many third-party senders you have to coordinate with.

The DNS records you publish - SPF, DKIM, and DMARC - are not optional. They are what tell the rest of the internet that an email claiming to be from your domain actually came from you. If your domain has no DMARC record, anyone can send email that looks like it came from you. If your DMARC policy is p=none, you are asking the rest of the internet to be kind about that. Most cyber-insurance applications now require p=quarantine or p=reject as a minimum, and we set those up as part of the deployment.

Is this what cyber insurers and HIPAA auditors are asking for?

Yes, mostly. Cyber-insurance applications have steadily added email-authentication requirements - SPF, DKIM, and DMARC at p=quarantine minimum - and most now also ask for evidence of an advanced email-security layer beyond the platform default. NHM's managed deployment satisfies both, and we produce the documentation (DMARC report excerpts, vendor coverage summary, sample quarantine workflows) that insurers and auditors typically ask for.

For healthcare clients, HIPAA's technical-safeguard posture for email containing PHI lines up with what we deploy - encryption in transit, access controls, audit logging. The deep HIPAA-specific content lives on our healthcare page; the email-security piece is the technical safeguard, not the policy and procedure layer.

Related: Cyber-insurance readiness, Healthcare IT

How do I get a quote and what does the deployment look like?

Start with a free discovery call. We will look at your current mail setup - Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, on-premises Exchange, hybrid - and confirm what you have. The call takes about 30 minutes and we will tell you what we would do first and what it would cost, with no commitment.

If you move forward, deployment runs in four stages: environment review and DNS readiness check, MX-record staging and parallel run, cutover with validation, and steady-state operations with monthly reporting. Most clients see the first measurable improvement within the first week - the managed layer catches a few things the built-in missed, and the monthly report shows you what.

Related: Contact NHM