LATEST INTELLIGENCE
EMAIL SECURITY THREAT REPORT 2020:
FOUR KEY TRENDS FROM SPEAR PHISHING
TO CREDENTIALS THEFT
PRESENTED BY
Email and collaboration platforms are the connective
tissue of most businesses and organisations, where
information is shared, plans are hatched, and
alliances formed. Yet as a human-driven medium, email
often represents the ‘weakest link’ in an organisation’s
security strategy. Indeed, 94% of cyberthreats originate
in the email environment. While traditional gateway
tools seek to filter out malicious emails on entry, their
reliance on lists of ‘known-bad’ IPs, domains, and file
hashes to determine an email’s threat level is extremely
limiting. A rule-based approach can often identify known
spam and other low-hanging fruit, but it fails to keep
pace with attacker innovations.
Spear phishing, impersonation attacks and account
take-overs, in particular, remain fruitful ways that
cybercriminals can infiltrate an organisation.
Increasingly targeted email attacks of this kind, which
overcome the limitations of traditional defences, are a
significant challenge for security teams today. As Peter
Firstbrook, VP Analyst at Gartner, puts it: “Common
controls, such as standard, reputation-based, anti-spam,
and signature-based antivirus, are fine for widespread
attacks and scam campaigns, but they’re not
good enough for protection against more targeted,
sophisticated, and advanced attacks. More than ever,
modern email security requires innovation and a shift in
mindset to combat the evolving threat landscape.”
Antigena Email is the world’s first cyber AI solution for
the inbox. By learning the normal ‘pattern of life’ for
every user and correspondent, the technology builds an
evolving understanding of the ‘human’ within email
communications. While traditional defences ask whether
elements of an email have been observed in historical
attacks, Antigena Email is the only solution that can
reliably ask whether it would be unusual for a recipient to
interact with a given email, in the context of their normal
‘pattern of life’, as well as that of their peers and the
wider organisation. •
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INTELLIGENTCIO
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