Why Paubox Tags is the best way to help users identify legitimate emails

Paubox Tags are an authentication tool designed specifically for healthcare organizations, automatically verifying incoming messages using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols. In an environment where phishing remains a serious risk, a JAMA Network Open study shows employee click rates on deceptive emails can reach 16.7%. Paubox Tags make it easy to quickly identify legitimate communications.

It allows administrators to easily configure rules through the Paubox Email Suite, ensuring that protected health information (PHI) remains encrypted. This means threats are blocked before reaching the inbox, a level of protection far beyond what manual monitoring or basic filters can achieve.

The challenge of identifying legitimate emails

Healthcare organizations can receive thousands of potentially harmful emails each month. For example, one BMJ Health & Care Informatics study on phishing exploitation reported over 18,000 confirmed malicious emails and 4.7 million suspect internet transactions monthly. With high statistics like these, manually distinguishing safe messages from dangerous ones is virtually impossible. Attackers mimic legitimate communications by spoofing sender identities, cloning internal formats, disclaimers, and signatures, and exploiting trust in familiar sources such as IT administrators or colleagues. Malicious links, attachments, or macros hidden in these messages can steal credentials or deploy malware without the recipient realizing it.

One of the key challenges lies in limited cybersecurity awareness among employees. Employees often fail to notice subtle warning signs, such as domain mismatches, spelling errors, urgency cues, or threatening language. According to the JAMA Network study, phishing attempts related to IT issues, like mailbox limits, resulted in 18.6% click rates, compared with 12.2% for office-related scams. Even experienced users can overestimate their ability to detect threats. Eye-tracking research confirms this behavior: recipients scan urgent cues first but often overlook errors like misspellings, spending too little time verifying legitimacy, which perpetuates mistakes.

What are Paubox Tags

Paubox Tags are smart, built-in email labels within the Paubox Email Suite that help healthcare organizations stay secure, work more efficiently, and maintain HIPAA compliance as phishing and spam threats continue to grow.

These tags appear as clear visual cues like subject-line labels or behind-the-scenes metadata, that signal an email’s legitimacy, source, and purpose by relying on trusted authentication standards like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. For example, Paubox [Tags], available in Email Suite Plus and Premium, automatically adjusts incoming subject lines based on the sender’s domain and security posture, flagging messages like verified vendor invoices with labels such as ‘Safe to pay.’

This is a solution to the problem identified in the study Email Use Reconsidered in Health Professions Education: Viewpoint, “Healthcare organisations are increasingly moving to digital systems, but healthcare professionals have limited awareness of threats.” Tags offers a way to lighten the potential burden on staff members.

How it identifies legitimate emails

• Paubox Tags verify that the sender is authorized by the domain’s records.
• Paubox Tags inspects cryptographic signatures in email headers and uses the sender’s public key to confirm the message has not been altered and truly originates from the stated domain.
• Paubox Tags combine SPF and DKIM results and apply the domain’s DMARC policy, such as reject or quarantine, when messages fail authentication or show domain misalignment.
• As headers are parsed, Paubox Tags evaluate SPF strictness, DKIM validity, and DMARC compliance to determine how each email should be categorized.
• Emails that pass authentication checks can receive automated subject-line labels like “Safe to pay,” giving users an immediate, at-a-glance signal of legitimacy.
• Paubox Tags analyzes sender addresses and metadata against customizable rules to identify trusted communications beyond basic authentication standards.
• Paubox Tags use contextual analysis and behavioral pattern detection to continuously refine accuracy and reduce false positives over time.
  
  

How it benefits email efficiency

Building on its role as a trust signal, Paubox Tags automatically classify messages using a mix of rule-based logic and AI-powered natural language processing built into the Paubox Email Suite. Labels are added directly to subject lines or email metadata, so employees can immediately understand priority and risk without opening messages, checking sender details, or scanning content.

On the backend, administrators can fine-tune tagging rules to trigger specific actions automatically, such as encrypting sensitive emails, archiving messages to meet retention requirements, or handing off data to DLP systems.

According to the study Drowning in emails: investigating email classes and work stressors as antecedents of high email load and implications for well-being, “High email load has been associated with impaired well-being because emails impose specific demands, disturb the workflow, and thereby overtax individuals’ action regulation toward prioritized goals.” Tags replaces these hours of manual sorting, filtering, and compliance checks with a consistent, automated workflow that fits naturally into Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.

See also: HIPAA Compliant Email: The Definitive Guide (2025 Update)

FAQs

How does generative AI identify suspicious emails that bypass traditional filters?

Generative AI can detect subtle patterns in language, formatting, and sender behavior that standard filters often miss.

Do Paubox Tags require any action from the recipient?

No. The tags are applied automatically and interpreted visually by the recipient.

Do Paubox Tags work with all email platforms?

Paubox Tags are compatible with most standard email clients and platforms, including webmail, desktop clients, and mobile apps.