In conversation with Security MEA, the Chief Sales Officer for VMRay, Ilijana Vavan regarding the cybersecurity landscape and company’s foray at Gitex Technology Week, where VMRay will showcase Email Threat Defender solution that can enable regional enterprises to put their email threat detection “on autopilot” and block phishing activity earlier in the malware cycle.
How would you describe the cybersecurity market?
While other sectors of the IT industry have slowed due to the uncertainty of the current pandemic, demand for innovative cybersecurity solutions not only remained robust but even showed an uptrend. According to the Allianz Risk Barometer 2020, cyber incidents rank as the most important business risk globally. There is a mounting concern at the senior executive level regarding information security, and Chief Information Officers (CISOs) push boardroom discussions into additional security investment. The COVID-19 crisis has further shifted board room priorities towards stronger cybersecurity posture and higher cyber resilience.
Which segment of cybersecurity does VMRay address?
VMRay offers the industry’s most comprehensive and accurate solution for automated detection and analysis of advanced threats, such as highly evasive malware, zero-day malware, and targeted attacks. VMRay closes the gaps in the organisation’s existing security stack and catches threats that bypass traditional security solutions. It empowers Incident Response and SOC teams to handle the growing volume and diversity of advanced threats with far greater speed and precision.
What is Email Threat Defender that VMRay plans to present at this year’s Gitex?
VMRay Email Threat Defender (VMRay ETD) complements anti-Spam and anti-Phishing solutions and detects email threats that other defences miss. VMRay ETD fully automates the scanning of inbound emails by analyzing suspicious attachments and embedded links. By sharing rapid detection results with other tools, VMRay helps thwart or interrupt the lateral movement, credentials theft and other downstream activities that lead to the compromise of high-value assets.
- Scans incoming mail and extracts potentially malicious attachments and URLs
- Accurate detection, without human intervention
- Scales easily to support increased email volumes without hurting performance
How is it different from the competition and what are the key advantages does it offers?
Roughly 85% of compromised emails use malicious links as their primary attack vector, so email protection solutions with weak link analysis tend to undermine security.
- Most email defense solutions use a point-of-click approach: They do a preliminary scan of incoming emails and overwrite potentially malicious links with safe links. However, they don’t conduct a full link analysis until the point-of-click—when the recipient actually opens a message and clicks on the suspect URL. This could take days or weeks, or not happen at all, reducing the ability to detect similar attacks already in the network.
- In addition, most existing solutions do not support analysis of links embedded in documents/email attachments. And they commonly skip monitoring large, well-known email domains. The resulting blind spots provide malware authors with easy pathways to intrusion.
VMRay link detonation occurs at the point of delivery and elevates link analysis to a new level. Suspicious links are automatically detonated and fully analyzed at the point of delivery, enabling VMRay Email Threat Defender to:
- Detect credential-harvesting pages and prevent theft of sensitive user information
- Simulate end-user actions, such as clicking a “Download” button, to reveal how user behavior advances the progress of an attack
- Dynamically analyze active elements—such as links, macros and embedded scripts—to fully understand the nature and severity of the threat
Who are the potential customers and why they should go for Email Threat Defender?
VMRay ETD is for all organizations that want to put their email threat detection “on autopilot”. With VMRay ETD, organizations can block phishing activity earlier in the malware cycle, provide wider coverage of threats, and leverage automated workflows to enhance existing email security investments. By automating and scaling the detection of email threats—and maximizing the speed and accuracy of detection results—VMRay ETD frees up SOC and IR team members to focus on the most challenging attacks.