Set up rules to detect harmful attachments

Gmail Security Sandbox

Supported editions for this feature: Business Standard and Business Plus; Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus. Compare your edition

Antivirus applications or tools can sometimes miss email attachments containing malicious software or files. Gmail can help identify these attachments by scanning them in a virtual environment called Security Sandbox. Security Sandbox scans files directly attached to messages and files inside archive attachments, for example zip or rar files. Supported attachment types in Security Sandbox include Microsoft executables (.exe), Microsoft Office, and PDF. 

Note: Security Sandbox scanning can delay message delivery by up to 3 minutes, although scans might be completed in less time.

Security Sandbox lets you create rules to specify which attachments are scanned. For example, you can scan attachments that contain words that you specify, that come from certain senders, or that are sent from outside or from within domains that you specify.

Messages with suspicious attachments sent to spam

When Security Sandbox identifies a message with suspicious or malicious attachments, the message is automatically sent to the recipient's spam folder. Google saves information about the attachment to improve security in other Google products.

Optionally, you can quarantine harmful software attachments detected by Security Sandbox instead. Create a content compliance rule with the spam metadata attribute.

The default setting for Security Sandbox is Off.

Security Sandbox setting options

Reports and compatibility with other email scans

Related information

Best practices for faster rules testing


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