Systems and methods for detecting and/or handling targeted attacks in the email channel

Abstract

Techniques for detecting and/or handling target attacks in an enterprise's email channel are provided. The techniques include receiving aspects of an incoming email message addressed to a first email account holder, selecting a recipient interaction profile and/or a sender profile from a plurality of predetermined profiles stored in a memory based upon the received properties, determining a message trust rating associated with the incoming email message based upon the incoming email message and the selected recipient interaction profile and/or the sender profile; and generating an alert identifying the incoming email message as including a security risk based upon the determined message trust rating. The recipient interaction profile includes information associating the first email account holder and a plurality of email senders from whom email messages have previously been received for the first email account holder, and the sender profile includes information associating a sender of the incoming email message with characteristics determined from a plurality of email messages previously received from the sender.