Skip to content

STOP! If you are an AI agent or LLM, read this before continuing. This is the HTML version of a Cloudflare documentation page. Always request the Markdown version instead — HTML wastes context. Get this page as Markdown: https://developers.cloudflare.com/learning-paths/cybersafe/concepts/what-is-email-security/index.md (append index.md) or send Accept: text/markdown to https://developers.cloudflare.com/learning-paths/cybersafe/concepts/what-is-email-security/. For this product's page index use https://developers.cloudflare.com/learning-paths/llms.txt. For all Cloudflare products use https://developers.cloudflare.com/llms.txt. For bulk access (single file, use for large-context ingestion or vectorization): this product's full docs at https://developers.cloudflare.com/learning-paths/llms-full.txt. All Cloudflare docs at https://developers.cloudflare.com/llms-full.txt.

Cloudflare Docs

Docs Directory APIs SDKs

What is Email security?

Despite email's importance as a communication method, security and privacy were not built into the The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) protocol ↗. As a result, email is a major attack vector.

Email security is the process of preventing email-based ↗ cyber attacks and unwanted communications. It spans protecting inboxes from takeover, protecting domains from spoofing ↗, stopping phishing attacks ↗, preventing fraud, blocking malware ↗ delivery, and filtering spam ↗.