Benefits of an Integrated Approach To Email Security

A successful cybersecurity architecture hinges on a layered defense system that works in tandem to protect your organization’s assets. Each component has a role to play in the security stack. And because email is often the primary vector used to infiltrate an organization, knowing when an email attack has occurred can help organizations understand if other systems have been targeted.

By exchanging key data and signals across multiple tools, it becomes possible to automate the detection and response processes. This will help you increase the speed and effectiveness of your security team while keeping your organization safe. Let’s explore some of the benefits of integrating email security with the rest of your security stack.

Email continues to be the primary vector for cyber attacks, partially because it is so easy to infiltrate and partially because it provides access to a variety of other applications and information. Organizations are bombarded with increasingly sophisticated phishing, malware, and BEC attacks every single day. As Abnormal continues to stop email attacks, detailed information about the attacks can be used to correlate and enhance dashboards and reports across the organization.

In the instance of a potentially compromised account, Abnormal’s cloud-native API-based approach provides access to east-west traffic, allowing the platform to stop internal communication deemed malicious. This type of information could then be used by security and IT teams to better understand the strategy behind the attack, answering questions like:

• Was the compromised account used to send any internal emails?

• If so, who were the recipients of the message?

• Was additional information accessed?

• Were mail filter rules implemented to provide ongoing access to messages?

Visibility is crucial. It increases the effectiveness of attack response, distinguishes which actions should be taken to remediate an attack, and improves the detection efficacy of attacks. This visibility is also important in understanding what types of attacks may come next—allowing security leaders to know where to invest their time and budgets to better mitigate risk.

Abnormal uncovers at least one compromised internal account during 79% of Fortune 1000 evaluations. In case of such an event, Abnormal will detect the threat, alert the security team, and remediate the potential compromised account. Security teams are then tasked with understanding the scope of the incident. They will continue to investigate to determine if data was exfiltrated, if the end-user device is compromised, and if that account was used to compromise other accounts within the organization.

By leveraging Abnormal’s out-of-the-box integrations or Abnormal REST APIs, organizations can pull account takeover (ATO) events from our platform and use this information in their incident response plan. This helps security teams determine the point of origin of the attack, the activity timeline of the attack, and the correlation of events with activity in other third-party systems—ultimately leading to more concrete information about how the attack occurred.

If a compromised account is used by an attacker, Abnormal identifies the anomalous activity, blocking the account, and alerting the security team. A SOAR platform can then pull information from the Abnormal’s platform, and trigger a specific workflow as part of the incident response plan.

Unlike traditional email gateways or platforms that rely on journaling, Abnormal’s API-based approach is easy to implement. With just three clicks, organizations can integrate with the platform and start establishing a baseline of known-good behavior. Complete protection is enabled within hours for all active mailboxes.

Once integrated with the email platform, security teams can leverage Abnormal’s out-of-the-box integrations with third-party systems. This allows you to cross-correlate signals and data with third-party threat intelligence tools or endpoint solutions to trigger investigation or remediation workflows, reducing the response time of email-borne threats.

Popular integrations include:

• Splunk: Augments your SIEM with metadata and risk scores for better attack correlation.

• Any.Run: Allows your security team to easily sandbox and test potential malicious attachments with the click of a button, directly from the Abnormal portal.

• Cortex XSOAR: Provides your organization with the ability to trigger playbooks when users engage with bad email or when compromised accounts are identified.

Abnormal also provides integrations for other applications, including Sumologic, Okta, and QRadar. In addition, the extensive API catalog allows customers to build their own custom integrations with any third-party solution in their security stack.

When integrated with one another, these tools form cohesive solutions that centralize your security insights to optimize workflows, automate lengthy processes, and coordinate remediation. Increasing the depth of your organization’s security doesn’t have to mean more work for you. By adopting an integrated approach to email security, you can equip your team with the most effective defense-in-depth protection.

Want to learn more about Abnormal’s integrated approach to email security? Request a personalized demo today to see the product in-action.