Responding to Cloud-Based Email Server Attacks

Just awful –the opinion on the state of a Fortune 500 company’s security by the hacker who stole fifty million credentials¹

Lately organizations have been choosing to migrate their email networks to cloud-based email providers like Microsoft 365. These cloud-based systems are appealing with their low cost per user monthly billing, ease of management and built-in security. But what are the risks these businesses can expect on a cloud-based email platform?

According to Verizon’s 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report there have been rising levels of socially engineered attacks especially against cloud-based email systems.² Three of these socially engineered attacks require a different kind of defense than typical email security implementations.

1 Spear Phishing

Spear phishing describes highly targeted phishing attacks. Spear phishers send falsified emails appearing to come from a trusted source and sent to a specifically identified group, such as users of a particular service, account holders or employees of a company. These fraudulent emails often request valuable data like user names or passwords.

2 Business Email Compromise

In a business email compromise attack, criminals send an email message that appears to come from a known source making a legitimate request. For example a trusted vendor seems to send an invoice with an updated mailing address or a bank looks like its giving a debt-holder new instructions on how to wire payments.

3 Account Takeover

In an account takeover, hackers get access to corporate email accounts through stolen credentials. These internal accounts are then used to launch subsequent targeted attacks. It’s difficult to detect these attacks since they don’t rely on impersonation techniques, but come from a legitimate account.

An AI-Based Layer of Defense

Bryley engineers have added an important piece of software to Bryley’s arsenal for combatting these kinds of targeted attacks. Called Bryley Advanced Email Protection it gives machine-learning-powered protection against all three: spear phishing, business email compromise and account takeover.

By analyzing both historical and inbound data Bryley Advanced Email Protection is able to identify behavioral, content, and link-forwarding inconsistencies, and then flag and quarantine suspect emails. Traditional email security solutions are not even made to monitor internal traffic, so these systems have no way of preventing an attack that originates internally. But Bryley Advanced Email Protection, through its learning about your organization, detects both account takeover attempts and attacks launched from compromised accounts. Bryley Advanced Email Protection is also able to prevent attempts to compromise credentials by blocking spear phishing emails trying to steal employee passwords.

A Deadbolt for Your Email Server

Bryley partner Barracuda estimates close to eighty percent of organizations may be using M365 with no extra security. Microsoft provides a layer of security. But Bryley Advanced Email Protection is unlike anything Microsoft or Google’s G-Suite offers. It’s an AI-based system built to learn the internal and outward-facing behaviors of your organization, and treat emails that conform or deviate appropriately. So choose to put Bryley Advanced Email Protection in front of Microsoft and it’s a leap in terms of security. It’s like having a lock on the doorknob and installing a deadbolt.³

Bryley’s focus is on protecting and preserving its clients’ data. In this vein Bryley also offers M365 and G-Suite backups with unlimited retention and storage capabilities.

The tools Bryley uses to accomplish protecting and preserving data continue to change as technologies evolve. Bryley Advanced Email Protection is the result of Bryley engineers continual software and hardware evaluations to better protect its clients.

Since 1987 Bryley has been advising in computer security and can help your organization keep email threats from becoming disasters. For more information about Bryley’s approach please call 978.562.6077 or email ITExperts@Bryley.com.

^{1 https://www.wsj.com/articles/t-mobile-hacker-who-stole-data-on-50-million-customers-their-security-is-awful-11629985105}

^{2 https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/reports/dbir/2021/results-and-analysis/}

^{3 https://expertinsights.com/insights/how-multi-layered-security-can-stop-phishing-and-insider-threats-on-o365-barracuda-networks/}