Let’s be honest: email is still the easiest way for bad actors to sneak into your organization. Phishing, malware, weird login attempts—they’re all out there, and they’re not slowing down. If you’re in charge of IT, security, or just the unofficial “make sure nothing gets hacked” role, you need tools that show you what’s actually happening in your inboxes.
This guide is for anyone who wants to get real about monitoring and analyzing suspicious email activity using the Emailguard dashboard. I’ll walk you through the setup, what to focus on, what features are worth your time, and what you can safely ignore.
Let’s keep it practical.
1. Get Access and Set Up Emailguard
First things first: you need access to the Emailguard dashboard. If you’re reading this, I’ll assume you’ve already picked the tool, or at least you’re not afraid of trying it out. A few things to check before you start poking around:
- Permissions: Make sure you’ve got admin or analyst rights. Some views and actions are locked down for good reason.
- Integration: Ensure Emailguard is connected to your mail system (Office 365, Google Workspace, whatever you’re using). If it’s not, you’ll just be staring at a blank dashboard.
- Data Flow: Give it a little time. After you hook it up, Emailguard needs a few hours (sometimes longer) to pull in and analyze enough data to be useful.
Pro tip: Don’t panic if you don’t see much right away. The dashboard gets more useful as it ingests more of your email data.
2. Get Your Bearings: Understanding the Dashboard Layout
Dashboards can be overwhelming, especially when they’re packed with widgets, graphs, and alerts. Here’s what actually matters in Emailguard:
- Summary View: This is your “at a glance” health check. It shows recent threats, flagged emails, and overall trends.
- Threat Feed: A live list of suspicious or blocked emails, including sender, subject, and detection reason.
- User Activity: Who’s getting targeted the most? Which users are clicking risky links? This section tells you.
- Investigation Tools: Drill down into specific messages or users when something looks off.
- Settings/Filters: Tweak what gets flagged and how aggressively.
Honestly, you can ignore anything labeled “Insights” or “Trends” if you’re just trying to spot real-time problems. They’re useful for quarterly reports, but not for stopping a phishing attack today.
3. Step-by-Step: Monitoring for Suspicious Activity
3.1 Set Up (or Review) Alert Rules
Default settings are fine, but you’ll want to tune these so you’re not buried in noise:
- Flag common threats: Phishing, spoofed domains, malware attachments, impossible travel logins.
- Customize thresholds: If you get 50+ alerts a day, dial it back. If you get none, you’re probably missing stuff.
- Set up notifications: Get critical alerts by email, SMS, or in your Slack/Teams channel. But don’t overdo it—alert fatigue is real.
What works: Specific, high-confidence alerts (like “user clicked on known phishing link”). What doesn’t: Generic “unusual activity detected.” You’ll get desensitized fast.
3.2 Scan the Summary and Threat Feed Daily
Don’t try to read every email. Instead, treat the dashboard like a weather report:
- Look at the daily/weekly threat count. Spikes are your warning sign.
- Check the “Top Threats” or “Recent Incidents” section for anything new or strange.
- Pay attention to repeat offenders—both senders and recipients.
If you see a pattern (like the same user targeted three days in a row), that’s worth digging into.
Ignore: Pretty graphs showing last year’s stats. Focus on what’s happening now.
3.3 Zero In: Investigate a Suspicious Email
When something suspicious pops up, here’s how to dig deeper:
- Click into the incident or message.
- Review the metadata: Sender address, received time, subject line. Look for obvious fakes or weird domains.
- Analyze the payload:
- Attachments: Are there macros, executable files, or anything odd?
- Links: Where do they actually go? Emailguard usually previews them for you.
- Check user behavior: Did the recipient click? Reply? Forward it on?
- Trace the path: If the message got forwarded internally, see who else might be at risk.
What works: Emailguard’s link and attachment sandboxing usually catches the dangerous stuff. What doesn’t: Relying solely on the “threat score.” Always double-check high-severity alerts.
4. Analyzing Patterns and Trends (Without Getting Lost)
Once you’re comfortable with day-to-day monitoring, you can start looking for bigger patterns. Here’s how to use Emailguard for actual analysis (not just dashboard-watching):
- Top Targeted Users: Identify folks who get hit a lot—they probably need extra training (or just a heads-up).
- Recurring Threat Types: Are you seeing more phishing, malware, or credential theft attempts? Adjust training and filters accordingly.
- Source Domains/IPs: If attacks are coming from the same set of domains or regions, block them at the mail gateway.
Caution: Don’t overanalyze. It’s easy to spend hours slicing data and miss the simple stuff (“Hey, why does accounting get all the weird invoices?”).
5. Responding to Incidents: What Actually Matters
Spotting threats is only half the battle. Here’s what to do when you find something:
- Quarantine or delete the message: Emailguard can usually do this with a click. Don’t just mark it as spam—get it out of users’ inboxes.
- Notify affected users: Keep it simple. “You received a suspicious message. Don’t click any links or open attachments.”
- Block sender/domain: If it’s an obvious scam, add it to the blocklist.
- Escalate if needed: If there’s evidence of actual compromise (like a user entered their password into a fake site), follow your incident response plan.
What works: Fast action and clear communication. What doesn’t: Overreacting to every alert. Not every “suspicious” message is a crisis.
6. Tune, Test, and Ignore the Hype
Email security isn’t “set and forget.” The best dashboards are only as good as your willingness to tweak and test them.
- Regularly review your alert rules. Too much noise? Tighten them up. Too quiet? Loosen the filters.
- Test with real (safe) threats. Use phishing simulations to see if Emailguard (and your team) catches them.
- Don’t chase every shiny feature. Machine learning, AI insights, etc.—they’re nice, but most attacks are old-school. Focus on basics first.
Pro tip: Spend more time training your users than tuning your dashboard. People still click stuff they shouldn’t.
Keep It Simple and Iterate
Email threats aren’t going away, but you don’t need to drown in alerts or dashboards. Start simple: set up Emailguard, focus on real threats, and make small adjustments as you go. If you’re overwhelmed, dial it back. If you’re missing things, open it up a bit.
No tool is perfect, but with a little attention and a skeptical eye, you’ll catch the stuff that actually matters—and you won’t spend your whole day glued to a dashboard.