{"id":34712,"date":"2019-10-24T14:42:22","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T13:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/?p=34712"},"modified":"2019-11-08T10:28:10","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T10:28:10","slug":"leading-the-way-in-email-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/2019\/10\/24\/leading-the-way-in-email-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Email: A prime target for hackers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Email security is considered the number one way hackers are getting into a business so it is absolutely critical enterprises have an understanding of the subject. Keith Bird, Vice President of Northern Europe, Middle East & Africa, Proofpoint, discusses how the company aims to help enterprises secure their infrastructure by educating employees first. \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proofpoint, one of the top five cybersecurity businesses in\nthe marketplace, focuses on the importance of email security and considers this\nits heritage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tech vendor generally looks at cybersecurity through the\neyes of individual staff members. According to Keith Bird, most companies\nconcentrate on securing their infrastructure, but the hackers operate through\npeople with the aim of attacking individuals. Proofpoint therefore protects a\ncompany\u2019s biggest asset – their staff – via email security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We spoke to Keith Bird to\nfind out more about email security \u2013 he offers tips to notice alarming activity\non a network and discusses the cybersecurity trends occurring throughout\nEurope.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does Proofpoint aim to help customers?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 94% of all vulnerabilities and hacks are done by\nsomebody clicking on a link they shouldn\u2019t have or opening a harmful attachment,\nand 96% of that 94% is through email. So, we protect companies\u2019 email systems\nand their individuals. We also do something called email fraud defence which protects\ncompanies as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the biggest areas of growth for our company is\nsecurity awareness training. The biggest thing we can help\ncompanies with is educating their employees first. If we can educate\nthem on avoiding clicking on certain things, they\u2019re not going to get into\ndifficulties in the first place. Security awareness training is online training\nwhich our customers use in many different ways but one of the key elements of\nit is called phishing simulation \u2013 our customers can actually do an internal\nphish simulation inside the organisation and when employees click on things\nthey shouldn\u2019t have, it is done in a safe environment. This allows for bespoke\ninternal trainings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can the approach to educating users on what to avoid be\nimproved? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We must remember that for most employees in a company,\nunderstanding cybersecurity is not their core competency. In fact, it\u2019s so far\nremoved from their core competency that they\u2019re really not to blame. The progressive companies are those that are looking at\nsecurity awareness training to educate their customers and be proactive about\nit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what most of our customers do is utilse our solutions upfront,\nwhich is part of the induction process, so when a new employee joins the\ncompany they go through a series of trainings to hopefully stop them from doing\nthings they shouldn\u2019t inadvertently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it\u2019s not enough to just do the training when\nsomebody first joins because three years down the line, they will have\nforgotten what they did in those first few weeks. This is where the second\nelement of the security awareness training solutions we offer comes into play. Our\ncustomers can use our solutions to carry out an internal phishing simulation\nattack and that way it\u2019s in a safe environment, allowing the company to understand\nwhich employees know which attachments to avoid and who needs extra help. So\ninstead of coming down really hard on people who\u2019ve had induction training but\nhaven\u2019t had professional training since, it\u2019s a really effective way to decipher\nbetween those who are in need of further cybersecurity training. So, we say\nmake it part of the induction process but then have an\nongoing programme where you can identify people that need to develop their\ncybersecurity awareness.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How would you describe the current cybersecurity\nlandscape in Europe? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you look at all of the solutions we provide, they\u2019re\naddressing the biggest vulnerabilities which is currently email as well as social\nmedia. Everyone is using social media which is why we have solutions to protect\ncompanies but also their employees while they\u2019re active on social media sites. Another\nexample of this is people using their own email systems at work such as Hotmail.\nSo, we have a system called Proofpoint Browser Isolation and this gives employees\nthe chance to use their own email systems at work but in a protected, isolated\nenvironment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another example is the thousands of cloud applications which\nare increasing by amount, so we have a number of solutions that aim to protect\ncompanies. Email is where the biggest vulnerability derives from. The\ninteresting statistic is that 94% of hacks are coming through people clicking\nattachments and links, 96% of that is through email but if you look at\ncustomers\u2019 IT spending, particularly around security spending, the average is\nsomething like only 8% of most companies\u2019 security budget is spent on these\nareas. Most companies are focused on securing\ninfrastructure but that\u2019s not where the threats are coming from. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you think there are any Europe-specific countries that\nneed to be improving their cybersecurity approach?  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s an issue across the board \u2013 the bad guys don\u2019t\ndiscriminate. It doesn\u2019t matter which market, country, or vertical sectors you\nlook at, it\u2019s the same everywhere. They are extremely targeted so if a hacker\ndiscovers a vulnerability, they will keep going until the vulnerability is\nstopped. We see it happening in all countries and markets, there aren\u2019t any\nthat really stand out. Typically, the regulated industries have very good\nprocesses around this but generally everyone is facing\nthe same challenge, particularly as employees are using social media more\nregularly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are there any major cybersecurity trends that stand out across\nEurope?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re increasingly noticing that customers\nare placing more and more focus on email security because it is absolutely the\nnumber one way hackers are getting in and we\u2019re seeing this change occur\nin large enterprises. The issue for some of the smaller organisations that\ndon\u2019t have the budgets or perhaps the resources or knowledge is that they are vulnerable.\nBigger enterprises often understand the importance of having email security but\nmany of them went to the market three or four years ago, chose an email\nsecurity solution and then haven\u2019t returned to see what else is now available. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We encourage potential customers to do a couple of things;\nfirst of all, we can help them identify what we call their Very Attack People. These\nare different to VIPs – Very Attack People are the people in an organisation being\nattacked and the targets are usually very surprising. It isn\u2019t necessarily the\nCFO – although they are undoubtedly a high-level target – it\u2019s often people you\nwouldn\u2019t consider such as the customer services manager or an individual\nengineer as they have access to the information that the hacker is seeking. So,\nwe say to people that we can help them identify those Very Attack People. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondly, if you haven\u2019t been out to the market and looked\nat your email solution for a good three or four years, give us a chance to do a\nproof of concept for you. We find that when we do a proof of concept with\ncustomers, they\u2019re often surprised at how much we\u2019re catching that other competitors\nhaven\u2019t. So, I think it\u2019s really important, given email security is the biggest\nvulnerability of all, that all companies including the small enterprises who\nmight not even think about it, take another look at the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With so many security companies in the market today, how\ndoes Proofpoint stand out? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would say there are two things; firstly, we\u2019re a leader in\nthe Gartner Magic Quadrant which is really important and gives customers that\ncomfort factor. Secondly, the fact we look at security with a people-centric\napproach is so important because the technology and software should follow. What\u2019s\nmost important is who the people are that are being attacked and how we can\nprotect them. We find people in the very highest part of an organisation still clicking\non harmful links. So, even after trying to educate people, they still might\nclick on these links, so you need to make sure you capture as much as possible.\nWe see 600 million emails that we\u2019re protecting each\nday where we identify attacks and stop them. This is a huge number and\nmeans we have the best intelligence network in the business and that\u2019s what\nmatters. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Email security is considered the number one way hackers are getting into a business so it is absolutely critical enterprises have an understanding of the subject. Keith Bird, Vice President of Northern Europe, Middle East & Africa, Proofpoint, discusses how the company aims to help enterprises secure their infrastructure by educating employees first. \u00a0\u00a0 Proofpoint, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":34713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,1489,93],"tags":[564,13706,13704,1264,13708,13705,4542,10584,13707],"class_list":["post-34712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-enterprise-security","category-insights","category-top-stories","tag-cybersecurity","tag-cybersecurity-awareness","tag-email-fraud-defence","tag-email-security","tag-gartner-magic-quadrant","tag-phishing-simulation","tag-proofpoint","tag-security-awareness-training","tag-very-attack-people"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34712"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35129,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34712\/revisions\/35129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/eu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}