All posts by courtney.anderson@coalesce.com

Turning your weakest asset, the email recipient, into your greatest strength in blocking spear phishing

 

Cyber Security breaches proliferate and create more victims in 2014

  1. Some 91% of high profile breaches begin with a “spear phishing” email, according to research from security software firm Trend Micro.1
  2. Phishing attacks continue to increase in every significant way, and remain an ominous threat to organizations and consumers around the world, as reported the Anti Phishing Working Group (APWG) recently.2
  3. All advanced security methods prior to email receipt still allow a Toxic Trickle of emails to pass through to the email recipient.3
  4. According to the IBM Security Services Cyber Security Intelligence index report from July 2013, the human factor [email recipients] accounts for approximately 80 percent of security breaches.4
  5. Top security vendors have the ability to catch “up to 99%” of malicious email, but it only takes one Spear Phishing Email to penetrate the organization and cause complete havoc.5
  6. The last defense to cyber attacks is the email recipient. The critical role of email recipients in cyber security is recognized under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). In implementing FISMA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) requires that personnel be trained to spot spear phishing and that they report spear phishing to security personnel.6
  7. Until recently, training and awareness were the only ways to make the email recipient vigilant. Statistics published by Internet Security Awareness Training (ISAT) firms indicate that formal training can substantially reduce an organization’s vulnerability to cybercrime variably by 15-80 percent.7,8
  8. Interactive training, live exercises and sustained awareness help, but they have shown to be largely ineffective. A recent quiz by McAfee (June 2014 Threats Report) showed that 80 percent of enterprise users fail to detect at least one of seven phishing emails.9  A research study commissioned by Dell showed this year that 73 percent of 1440 organizations experienced a security breach in the last twelve months.10
  9. Why? The email recipient is faced with 100 plus emails per day, each one of which has the potential to be a spear phishing email. Added to that, the recipient may be spear phished by his own organization for training and assessment. Therefore every single one of the 100+ emails the recipient receives is a threat and each email has to be scrutinized, hopefully with the recipient remembering at least some of the training on how to spot spear phishing emails.
  10. Not only does this pressure waste huge amounts of the employee’s time, but the volume of emails they have to scrutinized will most likely cause the recipient to miss the threat altogether and allow cybercriminals to penetrate the organization.
  11. Cyber breaches will continue to proliferate and create more victims because the email recipient, the final defense against spear phishing, will continue to be compromised by the lack of the proper tools to protect themselves and their organizations.11

What do Security Providers have to do to STOP cyber security breaches in their client organizations?

  1. Utilize their selected methods, IP reputation, Email authentication, Web reputation, Filtering, Exploit prevention, etc., to strip out the majority of bad emails.12
  2. Use their company’s and their client’s trusted sender lists to identify those emails known to be safe (i.e., legitimate internal, partners, collaborators and suppliers emails).13  Trusted sender lists are easily created and maintained.
  3. Use Caution Icons to mark the 1-5% of emails that don’t adequately authenticate or are not identified on the trusted sender list.
  4. Caution Icons are displayed directly in the inbox [replacing the Email Icon].
  5. Caution Icons warn the email recipient that these emails are suspect and need to be scrutinized.
  6. Hide email attachments and links until the suspect email is judged valid.
  7. Provide instant spear phishing identification instructions, check boxes, and relevant details of the cautioned email via hover over of the Caution Icon for real-time training and awareness on what to do with the cautioned email (i.e. send to IT for inspection).
  8. This eliminates the arduous task of having the email recipient scrutinize each of their 100+ emails, worrying that any of their emails could be a Spear Phish by cyber criminals or a mock Spear Phish by their own organizations.
  9. These tools free the email recipient to work without fear on 95% of their emails.
  10. For the 1-5% of emails that are cautioned, there is only one or two that the recipient might be interested in. They now have the ability to quickly and effortlessly protect, detect and respond to spear phishing email attacks before falling prey to them.
  11. It is a clear indication the email is a Spear Phish when normally safe emails from its own organization, trusted partners, or suppliers suddenly appears marked with a Caution Icon.
  12. Alerts of spear phishing emails immediately go to the global threat networks and inter-company to stop this attack before it begins.
  13. You have now secured your client’s final defense with many adequately equipped human sensors, examining a small group of suspect emails, armed with the instructions on how to evaluate, stop and report Spear Phishing.

 

Implementing the Final Defense Solution to protect your Clients

 Key Points:

  1. Organizations are strongly recommended to adopt the NIST Cybersecurity Framework14 and implement the necessary capabilities to minimize risk, loses and liability.15
  2. Organizations that are victims of spear phishing attacks may soon be liable if they don’t have adequate cyber security infrastructure.16
  3. Spear phishing training and awareness is becoming mandatory for employees and government workers.17
  4. Interactive training and filtering (the best past solution) are not sufficient to stop all spear phishing attacks at the end user level.

 

Available Complete Solutions for Implementation:

  1. Iconix has developed and validated a solution with all the components needed to secure the final defense18 discussed above and to fully meet the NIST recommendations. The solution has been tested and deployed it with 50,000 ongoing end users over several years.
  2. It fills critical end user security infrastructure gaps and leverages your existing security clouds, appliances and/or software.  It also calls attention to all the security measures you have employed to protect your client in the background.
  3. The solution is powered by patent protected Iconix software. It can work with multiple types of end user email and webmail preferences and can be positioned at different places in the email stream.
  4. Iconix patents cover marking or segregating into folders any authenticated and trusted emails or calling up mini HTML pages by hovering over the icon or markings.
  5. It is the best solution for a “real life” response to today’s cyber attacks and is a solid foundation for the NIST Cybersecurity Framework:
  6. The Iconix solution addresses the NIST Cybersecurity Framework recommendations regarding protection, detection and response by providing unique capabilities for doing real-time awareness, training, continuous monitoring of cyber attacks, and communication, analysis and mitigation of detected cyber security events.
  7. Caution icons for suspect emails can also be exchanged with Trusted Icons for safe emails if desirable.

Step-by-step implementation of products/services is done by:

  1. Evaluating the authentication upstream of the mail server and comparing the sender to the trusted list.
  2. Prominently marketing the small percentage of emails that are not sufficiently authenticated or are not on the trusted list as “Caution! DO NOT click on links or open attachments!”
  3. By calling the recipients attention to the imminent threat.
  4. By providing hover-over instructions as to what to do next with the suspect email.
  5. By highlighting spear phishing emails that are masquerading as someone else, i.e., from the recipient’s own organization or a trusted partner.
  6. By providing action buttons in the hover-over content to forward to IT.
  7. By IT validating the threat and striking the IP from the incoming steam, deleting it from the inbox and/or re-marking the toxic emails as known toxic.
  8. IT forwards the email to its security partner which then forwards it to the global intelligence community, its own users and/or other alert databases and blacklists that it is associated with.
  9. Providing interactive training to speed up the decision process for the targeted recipients so that they spot spear phishing emails immediately because of their caution icons.

 

References

  1. Spear-Phishing Email: Most Favored APT Attack Bait. Trend Micro Incorporated Research Paper, 2012.
  2. APWG Phishing Trends Report for Q1 2014. APWG, June 2014
  3. Letting The Wrong Ones In: Email Security’s Big Blind Spot. FireEye Blog. December, 2013
  4. IBM Security Services Cyber Security Intelligence Index. IBM Corp., July 2013
  5. Why Phish Should Not Be Treated as Spam. Norman Sadeh. Carnegie Mellon University. May 2012
  6. Managing Information Security Risk. NIST, Special Publication 800-39, March 2011
  7. The Human Hack: How to Fight an Internet Risk Technology Can’t Fix. Bloomberg. Nov, 2013
  8. Going Spear Phishing: Exploring Embedded Training and Awareness. IEEE Security and Privacy, February 2014.
  9. McAfee Labs Threats Report. August, 2014
  10. Protecting the organization against the unknown A new generation of threats. Dell Inc. February 2014
  11. Protecting the organization against the unknown A new generation of threats. Dell Inc. February 2014
  12. Cyber Security Planning Guide. Federal Communications Commission. Oct 2012
  13. Whitelisting for Cyber Security. Public Interest Advocacy Centre. November 2010.
  14. Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity. NIST, February, 2014
  15. Boards of Directors, Corporate Governance and Cyber Risks: Sharpening the Focus. SEC Commissioner Luis A. Aguilar, June 2014
  16. Cybersecurity Trends for 2014. Corporate Compliance Insights. February, 2014.
  17. Mandatory Cyber Security Awareness Training. 13 FAM 330. US Dept of State.
  18. Deploying Deception Sensors in APT Defense. Iconix Inc. August, 2014.

New Revolutionary Email Advertising Platform creates a Paradigm shift for Advertisers and Email Service Providers

Even with the tremendous growth of online media marketing, its impact and ROI has not yet come close to email marketing, which is still used extensively to reach existing and new customers (1). Today a revolutionary new email advertising platform is creating a paradigm shift for Email Service Providers and Advertisers.

Traditional email advertising platforms offered by top ad-selling companies such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and AOL, still present difficulties in engaging customers that need to go through six or seven steps to discover the expected content and decide whether or not to act on it (2). Due to today’s shorter and shorter attention spans, email recipients are not really opening and “reading” emails — they are just scanning quickly for useful content (3).

Other email advertising platforms, such as Constant Contact, iContact, ExpressPigeon, MailChimp and AWeber, have a strong risk of the email not being noticed, not being delivered, or even worse, having the email being flagged as spam, which can negatively affect advertisers’ ROI and brand (4).

This new proven addition to current webmail and email client systems greatly revolutionizes and streamlines the user experience by reducing the number of steps required to review and commit on an offer or activity. Emails can often be acted on without even opening them. Display advertising, video, rich text and other powerful tools are naturally embedded and instantly accessible.
Furthermore, none of the traditional email platforms identify trusted brands and increase the recipients’ confidence to act by differentiating trusted emails from spoof or spear phishing emails, which both instills confidence to act and protects the email recipient.

The new adaptation to current webmail and email client systems is creating a paradigm shift and will bring many more business, mobile and home accounts to Email Service Providers and increase their revenue from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars annually.

For advertisers, the new platform creates a entirely new, third revenue stream, comparable in size to search and display advertising to better reach customers and to integrate customer data with other platforms..

Coalesce Corporation announced the adaptation and is seeking an acquirer for the company that developed and proven the technology

For details, please contact Courtney Anderson at W 415-384-3040, Mobile 415-299-0045 or ca@coalesce.com

 

References:

1. ExactTarget 2012 Channel Preference, Forrester US

https://litmus.com/blog/email-preferred-more-clicks-conversions-roi

2. Top Five Email Marketing Platforms

http://www.cmscritic.com/top-five-email-marketing-platforms/

3. The 8-Second Challenge: Email Marketing for Our Shrinking Attention Span

https://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/8-second-challenge-email-marketing-shrinking-attention-span-133000721.html

4. Are You Making This Common E-mail Marketing Mistake?

http://www.thedirectmailman.com/direct_mail_answers_for_p/2011/05/are-you-making-this-common-e-mail-marketing-mistake.html

No One is Safe from Cyber Terror

The “known” economic damage from cyber criminals is estimated to cost the global economy nearly $113 billion a year1.  It is far more than this estimate, due to unreported or unknown damages, loss of intellectual property, public embarrassment and loss of business due to breach of trust.

According to Trend Micro, spear phishing has become the number one way to penetrate computers and networks and steal valuable resources — 91% of all Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) involve spear-phishing2. APTs – are covert and continuous targeting of computers and networks to infiltrate a specific entity. APTs target organizations and nations for business or political gains.

From governments, to public and private organizations, to people, it is happening worldwide.  It’s insane growth and damage is often supported and underwritten by organizations, countries and political groups.

Even Defense Departments, Finance, Health and other organizations with highly sensitive information have been penetrated.

New developments by the world’s leading security experts have blocked most of the damaging infiltration tactics by sophisticated cyber criminals.  We all can take comfort in that.  They have done a masterful job.

However, sophisticated cyber criminals work hard to develop workarounds to the newest security protocols.  It is a spy/counter spy game.  Unfortunately for the targeted victims, some toxic trickle always gets through.

All current security protocols, spam filters, antivirus, bad url tracking, “detonators”, and forensics, fail under persistent attacks by cyber criminals for one real reason, you or your coworkers fall prey to the remaining toxic trickle of spear phishing attacks that get through your, or your organization’s, most rigorous defenses.

There is even debate amongst security providers and security experts that antivirus approaches may be dead3.

The best way to visualize what is happening is seeing your organization’s management and employees as facing a firing squad of ten riflemen.  Eight and possibly even nine of the firing squads bullets can be contained by the newest security protocols.  But one or two get through to the end user.  If even one gets through, the end user, and your organization, are just as dead as they would be if all ten got through.

That is why you need to show the end user and easy way to avoid the bullets that do get through.  Then they, and the organization, will live through this particular firing squad incident as well as the countless ones that will come after.

New security approaches empower the user to visually see which emails are safe and which are suspect.  The new approaches prevent cyber Infiltration and theft of intellectual property, authentication credentials and financial and other sensitive information at their source by empowering the end user so they can avoid the drastic damage done by a single click on a poisonous link or document4.

The new security approaches take advantage of the existing security protocols and add to them, to prevent the terrible consequences of a mistake by a single user.  They also have the additional benefits of allowing the user to quickly see who wants to contact them and what they want to impart.

To find out more, see

Twitter: https://twitter.com/coalesce_world

Google+: https://plus.google.com/105770473636273023463/posts

or contact Courtney Anderson at W 415-384-3040, Mobile 415-299-0045 or ca@coalesce.com

References:

 

(1) 2013 Norton Report.http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/18475/cyber-crime/2013-norton-report.htm

(2) 2012 Trend Micro report. http://www.trendmicro.com/cloud-content/us/pdfs/security-intelligence/white-papers/wp-spear-phishing-email-most-favored-apt-attack-bait.pdf

(3) Antivirus is Dead: Long Live Antivirus! http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/05/antivirus-is-dead-long-live-antivirus/#more-25861

(4) FBI warns of increased spear phishing attacks. http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240187487/FBI-warns-of-increased-spear-phishing-attacks

 

Dr. Courtney Anderson, CEO

Coalesce Corporation

447 Miller Ave, Suite E

Mill Valley, CA 94941

www.coalesce.com/new

courtney.anderson@gmail.com

 

Revolutionary New Proven Email Adaptation Combats Spear Phishing’s Toxic Trickle

Revolutionary New Proven Email Adaptation Combats Spear Phishing’s Toxic Trickle

 A new Email Addition, that can be deployed by Security Organizations, Webmail and/or Email Client Providers, revolutionizes the email user experience, speeds email review, and provides protection from spam and spear phishing.

Cyber Thieves are defeating end-point defenses such as spam filters, bad urls, “detonators”, and forensics.

The new email modification fights direct and indirect spoofs and enables rapid, large-scale deployment of services that visually identify legitimate messages.  This protects users and enterprises from frequent and costly phishing and spear phishing attacks.

This adaptation will bring many more business, mobile and home accounts to Email Service Providers and increase their revenue from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars annually, while protecting their users and advertisers.

For advertisers, the new platform creates a third revenue stream comparable in size to search and display advertising.

Coalesce Corporation announced the adaptation and is seeking an acquirer for the company that developed the technology

For details, please contact Courtney Anderson at W 415-384-3040, Mobile 415-299-0045 or ca@coalesce.com

New Email Adaptation Revolutionizes the Email Experience and Boosts Review Speeds

New Email Adaptation Revolutionizes the Email Experience and Boosts Review Speeds

 New proven addition to current webmail and email client systems greatly revolutionizes and streamlines the user experience, speeds review and provides them protection from spam and spear phishing.

The improved user experience comes from removing multiple steps from the existing email recipient reviewing procedure and providing ready access to websites, videos, invites, etc.  The platform also identifies and authenticates email senders to protect the user from spear-phishing and other cyber threats. It shows the email recipient which emails can be trusted and which are suspect.

This adaptation will bring many more business, mobile and home accounts to Email Service Providers and increase their revenue from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars annually.

For advertisers, the new platform creates a third revenue stream comparable in size to search and display advertising.

Coalesce Corporation announced the adaptation and is seeking an acquirer for the company that developed the technology

For details, please contact Courtney Anderson at W 415-384-3040, Mobile 415-299-0045 or ca@coalesce.com

New Revolutionary Email Platform Boosts Email Providers’ and Advertisers’ Revenue

This new adaptation to current webmail and email client systems will bring many more business, mobile and home accounts to Email Service Providers and increase their revenue from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars annually.

For advertisers, the new platform creates a third revenue stream comparable in size to search and display advertising.

This new proven addition to current webmail and email client systems greatly revolutionizes and streamlines the user experience, speeds review and provides email users and advertisers protection from spam and spear phishing. It shows the email recipient which emails can be trusted and which are suspect.

Coalesce Corporation announced the adaptation and is seeking an acquirer for the company that developed the technology

For details, please contact Courtney Anderson at W 415-384-3040, Mobile 415-299-0045 or ca@coalesce.com