Email Encryption Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

The email encryption market is projected to grow at 15.2% CAGR during the forecast period of 2021-2026. The technology penetration among small and medium enterprises has increased the use of email for sharing information amongst its clients and employees. These business emails often carry confidential data which is required to be protected from theft and manipulation. Email encryption is a crucial tool that helps businesses to safeguard their information from malicious programmers or scammers.

Key Highlights

• According to Right Inbox, there were more than 3 billion email users worldwide in 2019, and that number is expected to reach 4.3 billion by 2022. Users sent an estimated more than 280 billion personal and professional emails per day in 2018. Thus, because of its widespread use, email remains a massive cybersecurity threat, with an estimated 92% of malware being delivered by email, and 56% of IT experts pointing to phishing as the top security threat.
• Among all the organizations that encountered an email-based impersonation attack in 2018, 73% experienced a direct loss (data, financial, or loss of customers). Among these events, 39% cited data, 29% financial, and 28% noted lost customers. Moreover, 38% of those who suffered losses because of email-based impersonation attacks noted data loss as the thing that severely impacted their organization.
• Additionally, most cyberattacks begin with a simple email. More than 90% of successful hacks and data breaches stem from phishing, emails crafted to lure their recipients into clicking a link, opening a document, or forward information, reported the Herjavec Group, a cybersecurity product, and services provider.
• According to Proofpoint’s “Cost of Insider Threats 2020 Global Report,” the larger the organization, the more insider threat incidents. Large enterprises with a headcount of more than 75,000 spent an average of USD 17.92 million over the past year. The smaller enterprises with a headcount below 500 spent an average of USD 7.68 million.
• Moreover, according to Cisco Systems, 70% of public and private companies will be using cloud email services by 2021. This access to email from anywhere and on any device states that it is essential that organizations protect themselves from increasingly prevalent threats.
• At the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote working conditions brought new security risks and productivity challenges. Cybercriminals are taking advantage of distracted employee email behavior and web browsing behavior. Remote employees are receiving an increasing volume of COVID-19-themed emails that impersonate organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
• Major technology providers are taking initiatives to protect users from COVID-19 related online scams. For instance, in April 2020, Google had launched a new website focused on COVID-19 associated online security risks. Also, Google’s new generation of document malware scanners relies on deep learning technologies to improve its detection capabilities across over 300 billion attachments. They scan for malware every week. These capabilities helped Google to maintain a near to 63% detection of the malicious threats blocked by Gmail.

Key Market Trends

BFSI Industry is Expected to Grow at a Significant Rate Over the Forecast Period

• With the increasing adoption of online banking and other financial services, insider threats have also increased significantly. According to Proofpoint's statistics, the financial services sector spent more to contain insider threats per incident than any other industry. Over the last two years, the average BFSI companies' spend was USD 14.3 million to avoid a threat incident versus USD 11.54 million for energy & power companies and USD 10.24 million for the retail companies.
• In July 2019, Capital One Financial Corporation announced that it determined there was unauthorized access by cybercriminals who obtained certain types of personal information relating to customers who had applied for its credit card products.
• Banking giants like JPMorgan Chase & Co. use TLS, a standard encryption protocol for their e-communications and attachments, which can include customers' personal, confidential, or other sensitive data.
• Email encryption solution providers are also focusing on cutting-edge technology-enabled solution development to mitigate the security risk of BFSI players. For instance, in February 2020, Trustifi, a SaaS email security company, announced the launch of a solution that simplifies the receipt and transmission of encrypted emails. This solution is making it easy to send a 256-bit AES encryption as it is to send any other email. This newly developed solution allows users to send encrypted emails only by clicking a checkbox in Gmail or Microsoft Outlook.

North America Geographic Segment is Expected to Hold a Significant Share Throughout the Forecast Period

• The significant presence of technology providers and increasing cases of infected emails drive the growth of the North American geographic segment. The players in this region are focusing on entering into partnerships, merger-acquisitions, and innovative solutions offerings to stay in the regional and globally competitive landscape.
• As the statistics of Kaspersky Lab, in the last one month (14th May to 13th June 2020), the highest number of infected mail caused by Hoax.Script.Mailoy.gen (12.6%), Trojan.Script.Generic (10.3%), Trojan.Win32.Agentb.gen (9.2%), and Trojan-PSW.MSIL.Agensla.gen (9.1%). As these threats are increasing day by day across North America, is driving the adoption of encrypted emails in the region.
• In May 2019, WireWheel, which is a provider of data privacy management solutions, announced a strategic partnership with Virtru, a data protection platform provider. The alliance’s combined solutions help enterprises to meet increasingly stringent compliance regulations and increasing customer expectations for how customer data is collected, processed, and shared.
• Technology giants present in the region are also investing more in detecting email threats at the time of the worldwide pandemic, further driving the growth of the market in this region. As stated by Microsoft in April 2020, it tracks thousands of email phishing campaigns that cover millions of fraud messages every week. Email phishing campaigns which are more than just one targeted email for one targeted user. Among the millions of targeted fraudulent messages the users see each day, roughly 60,000 include COVID-19 related malicious URLs.

Competitive Landscape

The email encryption market is moderately competitive and consists of a significant number of global and regional players. These players account for a substantial share in the market and focusing on expanding their client base across the globe. These vendors are also focusing on the research and development investment to introduce new solutions, strategic partnerships, and other organic & inorganic growth strategies to earn a competitive edge throughout the forecast period.

• In February 2020, Proofpoint announced a set of integrated, end-to-end solutions that address email account compromise (EAC) and business email compromise (BEC) attacks. The newly developed solution has combined the company's secure email gateway, threat response, security awareness training, advanced threat protection, email authentication, and cloud account protection.
• In March 2020, Fintechs, Beyond Encryption, and Origo developed the full version of their Unipass Mailock encrypted email service free to all the users of Origo Unipass for two months to help protect the communications and data security of businesses and their clients.

Additional Benefits:

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
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