US 2021/0281586 A1 · Minimizing Data Flow Between Computing Infrastructures for Email Security

Abstract

Techniques for minimizing data flow from a first computing infrastructure hosting an email service platform to a second computing infrastructure at least partly hosting an email security platform that provides security analysis on emails of the email service. The email security platform may extract metadata from emails received at the first computing infrastructure, and send that metadata to the second computing infrastructure that is hosting a back end of the email service platform. The metadata extracted from the emails may include less confidential contained in an email, but enough information for the email security platform to determine whether an email is potentially malicious. Thus, the security analysis performed on emails to detect malicious attacks may be offloaded to the second computing infrastructure, but the metadata that leaves the first computing infrastructure and flows to the second computing infrastructure may be minimized by extracting meaningful metadata.

Claims19

Dependent claims

A method comprising:

receiving, at a first cloud computing infrastructure and from a user device, an email for a user account registered with an email service, the first cloud computing infrastructure hosting the email service;
extracting, at the first cloud computing infrastructure, metadata from the email;
sending the metadata from the first cloud computing infrastructure and to a second cloud computing infrastructure, the second cloud computing infrastructure hosting an email security platform;
evaluating, by the email security platform, the metadata against a security policy, the security policy defining malicious characteristics of emails;
and
generating, at the second cloud computing infrastructure, result data indicating a result of evaluating the metadata against the security policy.

3 more elements

A system comprising:

one or more processors;
and
one or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:
receiving, at a first cloud computing infrastructure and from a user device, an email for a user account registered with an email service, the first cloud computing infrastructure hosting the email service;
extracting, at the first cloud computing infrastructure, metadata from the email;
sending the metadata from the first cloud computing infrastructure and to a second cloud computing infrastructure, the second cloud computing infrastructure hosting an email security platform;
evaluating, by the email security platform, the metadata against a security policy, the security policy defining malicious characteristics of emails;
and
generating, at the second cloud computing infrastructure, result data indicating a result of evaluating the metadata against the security policy.

6 more elements

One or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:

receiving, at a first cloud computing infrastructure and from a user device, an email for a user account registered with an email service, the first cloud computing infrastructure hosting the email service;
extracting, at the first cloud computing infrastructure, metadata from the email;
sending the metadata from the first cloud computing infrastructure and to a second cloud computing infrastructure, the second cloud computing infrastructure hosting an email security platform;
evaluating, by the email security platform, the metadata against a security policy, the security policy defining malicious characteristics of emails;
and
generating, at the second cloud computing infrastructure, result data indicating a result of evaluating the metadata against the security policy.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Minimizing Data Flow Between Computing Infrastructures for Email Security

Life of this patent

Minimizing Data Flow Between Computing Infrastructures for Email Security

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims19