Dispositions and attributes

Email Security uses a variety of factors to determine whether a given email message, domain, URL, or packet is part of a phishing campaign. These small pattern assessments are dynamic in nature and — in many cases — no single pattern will determine the final verdict.

Detection vs. disposition

Detection is the process Email Security does to identify what threat an email may contain. An email can have multiple detections, but they will only have one and final disposition. The detections an email have will determine the disposition of the email.

Dispositions

Any traffic that flows through Email Security is given a final disposition, which represents our evaluation of that specific message. Each message will receive only one disposition header, so your organization can take clear and specific actions on different message types.

You can use disposition values when setting up auto-moves.

Available values

• Malicious: Traffic invoked multiple phishing verdict triggers, met thresholds for bad behavior, and is associated with active campaigns.
• Spoof: Traffic associated with phishing campaigns that is either non-compliant with your email authentication policies (SPF ↗, DKIM ↗, DMARC ↗) or has mismatching Envelope From and Header From values.
• Suspicious: Traffic associated with phishing campaigns (and is under further analysis by our automated systems).
• Spam: Traffic associated with non-malicious, commercial campaigns.
• Bulk: Traffic associated with Graymail ↗, that fall in between the definitions of spam and suspicious. For example, a marketing email that intentionally obscures its unsubscribe link.