ESG Blogs

In my continuing video blog series on Modern Email Security, I have had the opportunity to talk with many of the leading innovators tackling some of the toughest challenges in email security. The email threat landscape has been quite volatile over the past year, with so many criminals leveraging the human fear associated with the pandemic to fool unsuspecting users into handing over credentials and sensitive data.

If you haven’t heard about it yet, there has been a ground swell of activity over the past 12-18 months with security vendors rallying around a new theme: XDR. There have been different interpretations of what the “X” in XDR stands for, but the general concept is built on the success of the endpoint detection and response (EDR) model, now extending that model to aggregate and correlate telemetry from additional security controls, adding network, cloud, email, and more. The promise is that with a broader view of activity across security controls, more automation can be applied to deliver better coverage, insights, and ultimately more automated response actions for today’s sophisticated attacks.

With ransomware a top security concern for most cybersecurity teams, the cost of cybersecurity insurance is making its way into the annual budgeting process for CFOs around the globe. While ransomware is not a new cyber-threat, largely entering the cybersecurity scene in 2016 and 2017 with high-profile attacks, research conducted by ESG reveals that a majority of organizations continued to experience ransomware attacks in 2019, representing a concern for both business and IT leadership.[1]

Introducing ESG’s Modern Email Security Video Series

As part of my ongoing research around modern email security, I am shooting a series of video interviews with leaders from several email security solution providers, talking about the current email threat landscape and strategies to defend against them. My goal is to make these educational, explaining what’s happening on both the attacker side and the defender side.

Today’s announcement of Mimecast acquiring Segasec should help companies close another important gap in the race against the rampant phishing and credential theft attacks.

As Mimecast builds out their Email 3.0 strategy, the acquisition of Segasec will put the heat on bad actors who are busy stealing credentials by impersonating many of the world's biggest companies. With so many phishing attacks attempting to lead users to fake or impersonated web sites where they unknowingly give up login credentials and other sensitive information, many of the largest online companies become the biggest targets.

Mimecast continues to extend their email security platform to protect against the growing email-led threat vector. While many email security companies have implemented filtering techniques to detect and slow down url and domain spoofing, impersonation sites have been left unattended. Segasec’s subscription service proactively hunts down impersonation sites and shuts them down. This is kind of like going after the drug dealer’s home instead of the drug user. To accomplish this, Segasec continuously monitors domain name registrations, certificates, social networks, and more, looking for indications of impersonation. And when they find them, they have several methods of blocking access or taking down the impersonated sites.

Getting Email Security Right Is More Important than Ever Before

With business email compromise racking up some of the largest financial theft associated with cyber-crime, and the relentless use of phishing as a means to trick users into handing over user credentials and other personal and sensitive data to bad actors, security organizations need to take a hard look at how their email security solutions are protecting against these issues.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend Fal.Con Unite 2019 in San Diego earlier this week where the CrowdStrike team brought together over 1200 customers for two and a half days of keynotes and learning sessions. It was apparent from the moment we arrived that there was a significant partner focus, with many visible conference sponsors and partner-led sessions (most of whom are recent CrowdStrike Store partners), plus six new Store partners who are all leveraging CrowdStrike APIs and threat graph data to enhance their solutions. And of course, there was much to say about product and services roadmaps, as well as plenty of learning sessions to help users get the most out of their investment with CrowdStrike.

With only 12 months in a year and hundreds or thousands of important topics to educate people on, how are people ever going to cut through it all and hear about how important cybersecurity is? With cyber breach stories running in virtually every news media outlet weekly, is cybersecurity just becoming background noise in our busy lives?

With the recent announcement by VMware that it will be acquiring Carbon Black, VMware will be adding much needed security expertise and technology to its already strong portfolio.

Cyber Pros Join Together for a Night of Classic Rock

In conjunction with the AWS re:Inforce conference last week, ESG hosted an evening of classic rock, where we invited our clients to join us on the stage at the Hard Rock Café Boston for a classic rock jam night. While a few of the musicians knew each other, most did not, yet they jumped right in to perform tunes from bands like Led Zeppelin, Billy Squier, Pat Benatar, AC/DC, and many more.