Cyber Defense Magazine - Annual RSA Conference 2019 - Print Edition

Winning
the Battle for
the Inbox
by John Randall, VP Product Management, EdgeWave
Winning the battle for the inbox
For virtually everyone, email is the primary way
of connecting and doing business. However,
as we all know, the inbox isn’t as safe as it once
was. All sorts of bad actors are increasingly
competing to penetrate into users’ inboxes
and exfiltrate confidential information, or
launch nefarious links or code that enable
them to open backdoors into critical systems
and data.
As email threats become more and more
targeted and sophisticated, the challenge
to protect inboxes has taken on a whole new
level of complexity. Even as recently as a few
years ago, all an organization had to do was
deploy an email gateway to filter out spam,
malware and other inbox invaders. Done.
Unfortunately, the game has changed.
Today’s advanced, socially engineered email
threats blow right past traditional gateways
and attack users in a variety of ways with
spear phishing, Business Email Compromise
(BEC), ransomware and more. An email
security gateway is no match for these attacks.
Consequently, users are being conned,
spoofed and deceived more than ever, and it’s
costing businesses billions of dollars a year in
damages.
The reality of today’s email threat landscape.
Recently, we conducted a survey of over
300 IT security professionals, from CISOs
to infosec administrators. While we asked a
number of questions, several key points stood
out. More than 80 percent of participants said
they were “confident” or “very confident” that
traditional email gateways will protect their
organizations from targeted email attacks.
Yet a substantial percentage — 42 percent
— also reported that their organization fell
victim to a recent phishing attack. That’s quite
a disconnect.
In another contradictory finding, the survey
revealed that the majority of IT professionals
aren’t confident in employees’ ability to
spot or flag malicious emails, even though
over 70 percent of responders reported that
their organizations had conducted security
awareness training during the previous 12
months.
The survey results are a wake-up call,
revealing a significant disconnect between
IT professionals’ confidence in their existing
email security strategy and the realities of the
threat landscape. These survey findings also
serve as a call to action, underscoring the
need for IT professionals to honestly assess
their current email security measures and
take steps to achieve a modern email security
posture.
20 Cyber Defense Magazine - Annual Print Edition 2019