{"id":123809,"date":"2016-05-17T08:59:32","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T06:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=123809"},"modified":"2016-05-17T08:59:32","modified_gmt":"2016-05-17T06:59:32","slug":"industry-first-impersonation-protect-from-mimecast-combats-new-spike-in-multi-billion-dollar-whaling-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/industry-news\/123809\/industry-first-impersonation-protect-from-mimecast-combats-new-spike-in-multi-billion-dollar-whaling-threat\/","title":{"rendered":"Industry-first Impersonation Protect from Mimecast combats new spike in multi-billion Dollar whaling threat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mimecast<\/a><\/strong>, a leading email and data security company, announced general availability of Impersonation Protect, the first cloud service that directly combats the growing cybersecurity threat from whaling or CEO fraud.<\/p>\n

Mimecast\u2019s new\u00a0Impersonation Protect<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0uses advanced scanning techniques to prevent attacks by monitoring all email traffic for elements commonly used by criminals, including employee and domain names, and other keywords like \u2018wire transfer,\u2019 \u2018tax form\u2019 or \u2018urgent.\u2019<\/p>\n

IT administrators and security organizations can now block suspicious emails or choose to display additional security warnings for employee awareness.<\/p>\n

Cybercriminals are commonly using email as an entry point to steal confidential data and dupe employees into making fraudulent payments costing the global economy billions of dollars annually.<\/p>\n

New Mimecast research shows the threat continues to grow. Since January 2016, 67% of respondents* had seen an increase in attacks designed to instigate fraudulent payments and 43% saw an increase in attacks specifically asking for confidential data like HR records or tax information.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmail remains a highly popular attack vector\u00a0for cybercriminals, for good reason: it is one of the most direct paths to entry into the enterprise, and it relies heavily (and all too often, successfully) on human behavior to assure initial penetration.<\/p>\n

This means that attackers will continue to prioritize\u00a0email – and defenses must level up accordingly,\u201d commented Information Security Research Director, Scott Crawford, 451 Research.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhaling, for example – the targeting of executives and highly placed individuals in an\u00a0organization –\u00a0is becoming a more frequent\u00a0variant\u00a0of spear-phishing, and is a tactic cybercriminals are using with great success.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese\u00a0and similar\u00a0CEO\u2013fraud attacks would benefit from a security approach tailored to the changing threat landscape, such as in\u2013context user awareness training where\u00a0users receive not only\u00a0warnings and guidance about the threat of clicking on phishing links or opening up malware-laden attachments, but also indicators of fraudulent emails masked as executive communications.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Bauer, Mimecast chief executive officer, commented:<\/p>\n

Over 90 percent of cyberattacks begin with email, and social engineering-led email attacks are growing rapidly. Whaling is a particularly insidious attack and has proven lucrative by successfully targeting specific teams and individuals that attackers have researched via social media. It catches out even the most cautious people. Protecting employees requires updated technology that goes beyond traditional email security. Without the right protection, organizations are losing millions of dollars and exposing data to fraudsters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Impersonation Protect, the newest addition to Mimecast Targeted Threat Protection, gives customers of all sizes the comprehensive protection they need against whaling and other damaging forms of spear-phishing, such as weaponized attachments, ransomware and malicious links.<\/p>\n

*Mimecast conducted a survey of 436 IT experts at organizations in the US, UK, South Africa and Australia in March 2016. Respondents assessed the growth in a range of email attacks seen over the last three months.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mimecast has launched the first cloud service that directly combats the growing cybersecurity threat from whaling or CEO fraud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":123813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10459],"tags":[4837,26,375],"class_list":["post-123809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-email","tag-headline","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123809"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123815,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123809\/revisions\/123815"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}