AI Fights Back: 3 Ways Artificial Intelligence Protects You From Cyberattacks
Cybersecurity threats seem to be everywhere these days, from phishing scams in your inbox to malware lurking in the downloads you click. But what if there was a way to fight fire with fire, using artificial intelligence (AI) to outsmart cybercriminals? Believe it or not, AI is becoming a powerful tool in the cybersecurity arsenal. Here are 3 ways AI is working to keep you safe online:
1. Training Champions: Simulating the Bad Guys
Think about a world where cybersecurity professionals could practice their skills against realistic cyberattacks, that look real enough to fool anyone. Well, that world exists thanks to AI! Generative AI can create convincing simulations of cyber threats, allowing security experts to hone their detection and response skills in a safe, controlled environment. The more they practice against these “fake” attacks, the better equipped they’ll be to stop the real ones that come your way.
2. Phishing Emails? No Problem! AI Spots the Fakes
Phishing emails are a classic trick used by cybercriminals to steal your personal information. But AI is making it harder for these emails to slip through the cracks. AI can be trained to identify the subtle clues in a fake email, like unusual phrasing or suspicious sender addresses. By constantly analyzing emails and learning from new phishing attempts, AI helps keep your inbox safe from these deceptive messages.
3. Digital Neighborhood Watch for Unusual Activity
Imagine your computer network as a bustling neighborhood. Normally, things follow a predictable pattern – emails flow in and out, websites are accessed, and data travels along its usual routes. But what if a stranger showed up, acting strangely? AI can monitor your network traffic and learn what “normal” activity looks like. Then, if something unusual happens, like a sudden surge in data or a suspicious connection attempt, AI can raise the alarm. By constantly watching for anomalies, AI helps identify potential cyberattacks before they can cause any damage.
As AI continues to evolve, it will likely play an even greater role in keeping us safe online. So next time you see an article about a cyber threat, remember that there’s a whole team of AI warriors working behind the scenes to keep you protected!
The Challenges of Email Security in a Remote Work Environment: How Encryption Helps
The rise of remote work has transformed the way we operate. While it offers flexibility and convenience, it also introduces new security challenges. One of the biggest concerns is keeping sensitive business communications secure, especially when employees access email from personal devices and unsecured networks.
This is where ExchangeDefender Corporate Email Encryption comes in. It acts as a powerful shield, safeguarding your confidential information even when emails travel outside your company network. Here’s how encryption helps overcome remote work security challenges:
Protection Against Data Breaches
Encrypted emails are rendered unreadable to anyone who doesn’t have the decryption key. This minimizes the risk of data breaches even if a device is lost, stolen, or hacked.
Compliance Made Easy
Many industries have strict data security regulations. Encryption ensures compliance with data privacy laws like HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI DSS, giving you peace of mind.
Secure Communication Across Devices
Employees can access and send encrypted emails from any device, whether it’s a work computer, a laptop at a coffee shop, or even a personal phone. Encryption ensures sensitive information remains secure regardless of location or device.
ExchangeDefender Corporate Email Encryption
offers additional benefits like:
- Easy Integration: The service seamlessly integrates with existing email systems, requiring minimal disruption to your workflow.
- User-Friendly Experience: Both senders and recipients can use encryption easily, without needing extensive technical knowledge.
- Advanced Features: The service offers features like pattern matching and lexicon-based encryption for comprehensive data protection.
By implementing ExchangeDefender Corporate Email Encryption, you can empower your remote workforce to collaborate securely, while safeguarding your business from costly data breaches and ensuring compliance with regulations.
Ready to learn more? Visit ExchangeDefender today to explore how Corporate Email Encryption can take your remote work security to the next level! Link to ExchangeDefender Corporate Email Encryption
Improved SPAM Release Security: Quick Release
ExchangeDefender is giving users more power to lock down their valuable data. Now that ExchangeDefender handles business continuity and backups for M365/Gmail tenants there is even more information in ExchangeDefender that demands more flexibility with security policies. First, let’s talk about the upcoming feature that allows you to lock down your ExchangeDefender SPAM Quarantine Report activity.
Bit of background: ExchangeDefender Quarantine Reports are an immensely popular ExchangeDefender feature (coming up for an upgrade this spring btw!) that sends users a list of quarantined messages with a set schedule. Users tend to rarely look in Junk Items or review SPAM unless they are waiting for something so this is a cool feature that our users just love. Scroll down the list of quarantined messages and release or trust just by tapping the link. Super convenient, but does it meet your security requirements?
ExchangeDefender Quick Release feature now enables you to choose between convenience and a more secure release process. For many organizations, having the message released or get added to trusted senders with just a click is a huge time saver and user convenience. But if your Microsoft M365 / Gmail account gets compromised (which happens ALL the time) or you deploy a new security/business/CRM (mostly AI stuff) that scans links then this “convenience” can turn into an Inbox packed with SPAM messages that some hacker/service inadvertently released.
If this happens to you, know that ExchangeDefender can help with the “Secure Release” setting. By enforcing Secure Release, when the user clicks to release or trust a message they will be prompted to authenticate before they can release/trust the message. This way if you get hacked or install link scanning/crawling software in your tenant will not be able to access the messages without a password.
Now please, go setup your favorite authenticator app with ExchangeDefender MFA (next up, you can set it to be mandatory/required)
ExchangeDefender Domain Default Security Policy
Has it been a while since you last reviewed your email policies? Do you need to make sure that every user in your organization gets the same protection and the same service behavior and reporting?
We’ve taken some of our most popular features and wrapped them in a user-friendly wizard that will allow you to quickly configure ExchangeDefender. These settings establish the bare minimum configuration you need to reliably send and receive email on the Internet and instruct ExchageDefender how to sort your email.
Security Policy Overview
Our goal with the Security Policy wizard is to save time while configuring the major aspects of ExchangeDefender. While you still have access to hundreds of policies and can always configure new custom ones (as business requirements demand) it’s nice to know you can quickly adjust the features and make sure they apply to everyone in the organization.
You’ll be able to teach ExchangeDefender how to categorize mail, how long to keep it, and how to report it. Basic SPAM, malware, phishing, and address enforcement policies can be configured in seconds.
We’ve also added some of the settings that are exclusive to ExchangeDefender (From: policy enforcement) and some that always give IT teams trouble (DNS, DKIM + SPF records). The goal was to present all the required and support-intensive features in a friendly way so you can protect your network without knowing the details of the latest standards and security best practices.
Default Security Policy will automatically display the first time you log in as a Domain Administrator. It will load your current settings into the policy and allow you to review it or apply it to all the users in the domain. All the settings are still in their normal places so you can fine-tune your protection and features (https://www.exchangedefender.com/docs >remember the docs).
We hope this new wizard saves you time and gives you peace of mind that your protection is configured correctly.
Passwordless Login – Lower support, better profits
ExchangeDefender Passwordless Login is a new feature that lets users get into their ExchangeDefender account easier and faster. Instead of logging in and tracking passwords, the user just enters their email address and the OTP code we send there – and they get access to all their ExchangeDefender services.
The Passwordless Login feature will drive down the support costs because that was the major issue our clients found in supporting login and authentication problems. We even joked that you may have answered your last login problem email. We now have more data and feedback indicating that this feature is a hit:
In practical terms, wider adoption of this feature means less support work for login and authentication. The fact that it’s more popular than password reset on launch means the users have already seen this feature elsewhere and trust it as a secure way to get into their account.
We’ve also heard from our technical and compliance audience: “It allowed us to finally take you up on an automated password expiration knowing that it will keep our passwords secure and users wouldn’t notice.“
The value we provide to our clients is in the ability to securely email, send secure encrypted messages, and continue emailing when there are IT issues. By making it easier for our users to get to these features everyone benefits.
Thank you for your business and for trusting us to protect your email.
Service Provider Dude, where is my SPAM?
ExchangeDefender is the ultimate cybersecurity wrapper for an organization and we already discussed how Users and Domain Admins can locate messages ExchangeDefender was configured to keep out of the mailbox.
ExchangeDefender users have a beautiful and powerful way to access their quarantined mail and work around email problems, domain admins have flexible settings, policies and access to the logs to keep the organization protected. So what do ExchangeDefender Service Providers have that others don’t?
ExchangeDefender Service Provider access enables you to do deep troubleshooting and emergency “incident response” activities. Service Provider login is the highest level of control in ExchangeDefender so you have access to all the data that ExchangeDefender has.
Accessing Logs
ExchangeDefender Service Provider access gives you access to the centralized log facility where you can locate any message ExchangeDefender has processed from a central pane of glass.
You can download any search results as a CSV file that can be better visualized and analyzed in a spreadsheet and reporting tool of your choice. This is particularly useful when you don’t know the sender or are searching for an automated sender with a fake tracing email address.
Our partners frequently rely on this facility to troubleshoot for missing messages.
Downloading Raw Logs
ExchangeDefender Service Providers also have access to raw SMTP Mail Logs which give our partners direct access to low level SMTP transactions and error logs. It’s located in the same location as log search.
Service Providers rely on these logs as the ultimate source of truth regarding the traffic for the ExchangeDefender protected domain. This is a fantastic tool if you’re looking for intermittent delivery errors or policy violations or just have a very specific email or server you’re looking for.
Logs will get pulled from all our services and will be available for download within 24 hours. Don’t let the boilerplate distract you, almost all of our clients will get their logs within the hour. From there you can load the logs into your favorite analytics tool and dig for the errors and problems in the mail flow.
To sum it up
ExchangeDefender can help you account for every message going in and out of your organization. While users have a powerful and beautiful way to access their quarantined mail or continue where they left off during an outage or email problem, domain admins and service providers have far more access to the logs so they can troubleshoot around different settings and policies.
Introducing ExchangeDefender Inbox
Cybersecurity tops the list of IT concerns and spending, with email still being the most popular service with users and hackers alike: over 90% of compromises start with an email. If that sounds familiar you’ve undoubtedly had to deal with new email authorization standards, user training, troubleshooting mail flow, trying to figure out why email to or from certain people is bouncing, reconciling it all with new IT trends, cyber-insurance requirements, marketing. In a nutshell, email security is still a challenge and users just want something that works.
We’ve reimagined what the email security should look like in 2022 and we cannot wait to show it off:
ExchangeDefender Inbox Webinar
Wed, Sep 28, Noon EST
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/1111619875721771023
We hope you can join us for the webinar and see just how we’ve integrated all the ExchangeDefender security and productivity services to give users a single panel of glass to make email work for them even when they have issues with email. Can’t wait till next Wednesday? Shoot us a ticket at support.exchangedefender.com and ask us to enable it for you today!
ExchangeDefender Inbox combines over two decades of email security experience with the modern, mobile-first world of countless email issues. It enables our clients to get things done with email security and work through all the issues without involving IT. Users want a quick and reliable email platform that just works – work around SPAM filters, around SPF/DKIM policies, around bounces – all while leveraging email encryption to protect sensitive data. The service has been enormously popular with our enterprise clients and now we’re bringing it to all ExchangeDefender users – see you next Wednesday!
5 reasons to secure your law firm right now
Hackers are making big money on the legal industry lately, and it seems to only be getting worse. Law firms are vulnerable to cyber attacks due to the nature of their profession. They handle very sensitive information about their clients like: financial records, company secrets, and health information. Cyber-criminals are taking advantage of the fact that the legal sector is slow-moving when it comes to securing their data. If you’re a lawyer, or work for a law firm, here are five major reasons why you should take measures to secure your company right now:
Reason #1: There is a dramatic increase of data breaches
Law firms pose a higher risk for data leaks due to their business nature of storing and sharing sensitive information. Data leaks are the most common result of cyber-attacks. Due to the lack of security used by many law firms, it is easy for hackers to perform data breaches via malware, phishing, and even denial of service.
Reason #2: Phishing scams are most popular
3.4 billion fake emails are sent each day. In 2020, 74% of organizations in the United States experienced a successful phishing attack. It is becoming increasingly difficult to decipher whether an email is a phishing campaign or not due to the growing sophistication in the attacks.
Reason #3: Hacked email accounts is a major problem
There is a hacker attack happening every 39 seconds, and email is the main use of communication for most professional services. Criminals can take over most of your accounts associated with your email once they have gained access.
Reason #4: Lack of security as a priority
Less than half of all law firms in the U.S use some form of encryption software with custom policies to protect their client’s privacy. This means that a lot of your client’s confidential information is just sitting on a laptop or computer unsecured.
Reason #5: Ethical & regulatory obligations are weighing in
To comply with the ABA’s rule 1.6: Confidentiality of Information, lawyers must make a reasonable effort to secure client information. To operate in an ethical manner according to the American Bar Association, lawyers should have security policies in place to ensure the protection of client data.
Bottom line: Cybercriminals love law firms as targets for their cyber attacks. It is crucial for the modern law firm to protect themselves against email-borne threats, and data leaks. ExchangeDefender specializes in law firm data security, compliance, and continuity solutions. The legal industry relies on ExchangeDefender to mitigate risks of cyber and email attacks. We secure your law practice, and protect your clients by eliminating the danger of data breach or ransomware.
What is Phishing? (a simple explanation)
According to recent reports from the FBI, Phishing has become the most common form of cyber attack in 2020 and 2021. Phishing is a method that hackers use to steal your sensitive information like usernames or passwords. It is most often used for identity theft, where cybercriminals send a phishing campaign (via email) to gain access to your bank accounts, personal information, and more.
The goal of a Phishing attack is to: gain credentials like bank pin numbers, usernames and passwords, gain personal data like your name, home address, and email, and also medical PHI information like treatment information and insurance claims.
Where does Phishing happen?
Approximately 96% of phishing attacks are delivered by email. In 2020, it was estimated that 1 in every 4,200 emails was a phishing email according to a Symantec report. To put the numbers in perspective, for ever 1 second of internet activity, 3.4 million emails are sent.
There are also fake websites, social media accounts, and phone calls that are used by criminals to try to steal lucrative information. Beware of these websites, always check for the lock sign in your URL, and make sure that the spelling is correct.
What does Phishing look like?
Inside of a Phishing email you’ll find a malicious link, that (when clicked) will transfer you to a fake website that will request your credentials in the form of “logging in”. Most phishing emails, when you look at the subject lines, you’ll find that the following keywords are present, like:
- Urgent
- Request
- Important
- Payment
- Attention
The email would appear to be from a brand that you trust, like Amazon, Microsoft, or Facebook. The email “from” address is not actually from the brand, but rather faked to appear like it is.
What happens when a Phishing attack has been successful?
2020 Phishing statistics show that about 90% of users cannot identify a sophisticated phishing email. It’s not because we’re dumb, its because the attacks are executed so well. It is becoming increasingly difficult for companies to secure their data because office workers are human, and humans make mistakes. After a successful phishing attack, about 60% of organizations lose their data, 50% are infected with ransomware and get their credentials or accounts stolen.
Need Phishing protection for your business? Keep your company and data safe with ExchangeDefender PRO!
Interested in learning more about Phishing protection, click here.
ExchangeDefender CEO talks email-borne threats with Cybernews
Recently, Cybernews reached out to ExchangeDefender CEO, Vlad Mazek to learn more about how we keep businesses safe from cyber-attacks using top of the line security solutions. The informative discussion centers around the topic of cybersecurity, and what that means for the modern business.
With the recent rise in phishing attacks, it is smart to double-check if it’s really your coworker that emailed you.
By now, it’s probably hard to find an Internet user who has never received emails from someone claiming to be a long-lost relative who wants to share their fortune. While the majority of us are familiar with this type of malware, phishing attacks shouldn’t be underestimated. Nowadays, when threat actors start to include more personal details, posing as coworkers or even bosses, staying vigilant is key.
To discuss the topic of cybersecurity and phishing prevention, we reached out to Vlad Mazek, the CEO of ExchangeDefender, a company eliminating email threats before they even reach your inbox.
ExchangeDefender has been providing various security solutions for more than 2 decades. What was your journey like throughout the years?
We originally started ExchangeDefender to improve the reliability of our Microsoft Exchange servers by offloading all the security tools to a more scalable infrastructure. Over the years we’ve expanded our security portfolio to protect other email servers, as well as deliver more secure ways to rely on common office tasks such as file sharing, collaboration, and compliance.
Can you tell us a little bit about what you do? What are the main problems you help solve?
We used to say “We kill SPAM for a living” and to this day we simply eliminate common threats that lead to security compromises and service outages by providing email encryption, long-term archiving & eDiscovery.
We make it easier to rely on email for secure and reliable communication; which we do by keeping potentially dangerous content away from your webmail, mailbox, desktop, or phone. Simply put, we make it easy to get things done more securely.
What technologies do you use to detect and stop threats in their tracks?
We primarily rely on our internal early warning system which tracks unusual activity from known threat actors. Because of our size and client base, we often have the luxury of being among the first to be targeted which helps us identify safe and unsafe developments before they go “viral”.
We also participate in many proprietary, open-source, and data/intel sharing projects that help raise the security profile of everyone involved.
How did the pandemic affect the cybersecurity landscape? Were there any new features added to your services?
Pandemic actually improved the security landscape for our clients because they suddenly had to shift to a remote work model which inherently came with more stringent security requirements and more awareness for security policies and secure collaboration.
We noticed a significant shift from traditional office communication methods to SMS/TXT and we moved quickly to make all of our services SMS-aware. Mobile phones have become a security identification token, a mobile presence device, and far too often a failover computer. That’s why we invested heavily in extending our services to meet our clients’ needs to go beyond just sending email messages.
What sectors (for example, financial, healthcare, etc.) do you think should put extra attention towards email security?
The best way to answer this question is to think like a hacker because for them it’s not personal, it’s business.
Organizations get compromised for one of two reasons:
- They have assets (data) that are valuable
- They have a reputation that is valuable
If you have a lot of valuable data or a trustworthy relationship with your clients, you’re a valuable target regardless of your industry. It would be difficult to hack a financial institution because they have dedicated IT and security teams, go through routine audits, and can respond to threats quickly. Compare that to a small CPA firm that uses standard tools and an antivirus bundle that came with their PC.
When it comes to cyber threats carried out via email, what are the most common ones?
Email is the most popular way to get cyber threats into an organization, according to a recent study over 90% of security compromises started with email and it has not changed significantly in the past few years: the #1 cyber threat is from spear phishing. Spear phishing is a practice of forging the identity of the sender and the look of the email to something the recipient would find trustworthy enough to click on. What has changed significantly is the end goal of spear phishing:
- Deployment of RAT (Remote Access Trojan) software
- Theft of PII (personally identifiable information)
- Theft of security credentials
This list actually flipped in the last two years mostly due to the sophistication of RAT software that can give an attacker access to the entire network instead of just a single PC or cloud account. The latest variants target UEFI bios which keep the threat in place even after you get rid of the infected hard drives. As these threats evolve, they also highlight other security issues on the network which makes them difficult to remove and require constant monitoring.
With so many teams working remotely nowadays, what are the best practices when it comes to secure file sharing?
The single most important recent advancement in overall IT security that really deserves wider adoption is the use of MFA/2FA/OTP: multi-factor authentication that requires secondary verification before accessing any sensitive system or information. Working remotely, outside of a managed network and access to IT staff, creates a new universe of security threats that should be mitigated by:
- Deploying & requiring MFA for access
- Deploying a more aggressive backup and imaging solution
- Controlling and reducing the attack surface (by limiting access only to required web sites & services)
Besides secure collaboration solutions, what other security measures do you think modern companies should invest in?
You are probably already spending too much on overlapping, redundant, and underutilized security solutions.
The best security investment you can make today is to get an audit of your existing security portfolio and its integration. Being secure doesn’t come simply from paying for a security software/service license – it has to be properly integrated, configured, and monitored in order to truly keep users away from dangerous content. Due to the chronic lack of security focus and the habit of deprioritizing security for the sake of end-user comfort, many organizations find themselves in a perilous situation with cyber insurance demands.
We are seeing organizations getting compromised not because they don’t have security solutions or adequate training but because they don’t take the time to properly and fully implement the security solutions they are already paying for. An overwhelming majority of ExchangeDefender subscribers rely on less than 30% of the security features they already pay for.
Can you give us a sneak peek into some of your future plans for ExchangeDefender?
Our biggest technical investment for 2022/2023 is to make it possible to access external content (email attachments, files, messages, sites & services) in a secure online sandbox environment where dangerous content wouldn’t even have a chance to reach the user’s desktop, phone, or network.
Our biggest investment is in the area of security audits and assessments. While there is always a shiny new tool or service that promises better security, our data indicates that it’s rarely the lack of a tool, and more often the lack of proper deployment and management of sensitive information that leads to a security compromise.
We’ve helped countless businesses that have been compromised over the years and it usually comes down to neglect of security processes combined with a lack of a plan to respond and recover from a hack. Our future plans are to help organizations change that scenario because cybersecurity isn’t something you buy, it’s something you do.