EMAIL-016: Links and External Images Protection
- Platform
- Google Workspace
- Category
- Advanced Threat Protection
- Severity
- High
- Zero Trust pillar
- Applications & Workloads (weight 2)
- Golden fixtures
- 3
- Branch coverage
- Observed: fixtures prove the verdicts they exercise
- Provenance
- baseline
What it checks
Link protection should be enabled to scan URLs for phishing and malware. External image proxying prevents tracking pixels and IP disclosure
Recommended value
URL scanning, click-time warnings, and external image proxying enabled
Remediation
Admin Console > Apps > Google Workspace > Gmail > Safety > Links and external images > Enable 'Identify links behind shortened URLs', 'Scan linked images', and 'Show warning prompt for click on links to untrusted domains'
Fixture-proven verdicts
Every verdict below is proven by a golden fixture in the module's gating test suite. This table derives from the last green run; it cannot be edited by hand.
| Scenario | Expected verdict |
|---|---|
| clean | PASS |
| known-bad | FAIL |
| no-data | Not Assessed |
Framework mappings
- NIST SP 800-53
- SI-3, SI-8
- CIS Benchmark
- 2.16
- CISA SCuBA
- GWS.GMAIL.6.1v1, GWS.GMAIL.6.2v1, GWS.GMAIL.6.3v1, GWS.GMAIL.6.4v1
- MITRE ATT&CK
- T1566.002, T1204.001