Maximizing Data Protection: The Abnormal Security and Forcepoint Partnership

With remote and hybrid work, email remains one of the most important ways people collaborate, often at time-sensitive moments where mistakes in security enforcement can disrupt users and interrupt business. As the digital footprint of every organization expands, sensitive data is spread across disparate systems.

Security teams are faced with a challenge: Secure data while keeping email operational and safe. This dichotomy often consumes significant resources as teams set rules and maintain configurations to balance data and email security. Some tools add to this problem with extensive configuration, redundant rulesets and controls, and multiple dashboards.

Organizations need a better way to secure the significant amount of confidential and critical data in their cloud-based email ecosystem from the full spectrum of risk. This is where data loss prevention (DLP) steps in.

DLP is the most common way to prevent outbound loss or exfiltration of data. These are tools and processes that work together to ensure data is properly used, stored, and protected. Cybersecurity leaders use DLP as part of their overall strategy to prevent data breaches and unauthorized sharing of sensitive data.

Data lives in and can be accessed from many types of systems, so different DLP technologies and policies can be applied for email, network, cloud, and endpoint. DLP solutions use content analysis and policies to identify and classify data, then monitor data movement, access, and alteration to determine if it is being handled unsafely. Both content awareness and contextual analysis are required to identify, classify, and gather context about data.

There are three primary ways data may be improperly or maliciously accessed or altered, each potentially introducing cybersecurity and business risk to an organization:

• External threats: Criminals often use social engineering to trick employees into handing over sensitive information. Criminals may also try to access and/or exfiltrate data themselves using ransomware.

• Insider threats: Employees may intentionally send sensitive information outside the network, or criminals may compromise a user’s account to trick other people into sending confidential information or paying a fake invoice.

• Unintentional leaks: Employees may accidentally send private information outside the network or fail to follow security guidelines like encrypting sensitive data.

Corporate data sprawl introduces significant risk, and improper or malicious access or exfiltration must be prevented.

Abnormal Security and Forcepoint have partnered to offer customers a convenient and effective option for outbound DLP while securing their cloud-based email platform.

This partnership offers Forcepoint’s industry-leading DLP offerings to Abnormal customers. Together with Abnormal’s Human Behavior AI Platform, customers can better understand and secure their employees and their data.

Key Features and Benefits

Abnormal and Forcepoint help you protect your business from malicious activity coming in and data going out of your email environment. Abnormal customers receive a best-in-class DLP option to prevent data loss via outbound email, while Forcepoint customers add AI-native, API-based protection against today’s most sophisticated inbound email attacks. Specifically, joint customers can:

• Prevent outbound data loss. Forcepoint’s industry-leading solution offers a built-in library of 1,700+ policy templates and simplified management of policies and incidents.

• Secure inbound email. Abnormal’s behavioral AI platform adds a deep understanding of the business to effectively stop the full spectrum of email attacks.

• Ease the search. Whether you're already using Abnormal for email security or Forcepoint for DLP, you can add the other quickly to achieve complete inbound and outbound email protection.

The email and data security dilemma will continue to be critical for security teams to address. Partnering is the first step for Abnormal in providing customers with options for outbound data protection, along with our core competency of securing inbound email. We look forward to future partnerships, integrations, and native offerings to support customers’ DLP needs.

Interested in learning more about Abnormal? Schedule a demo today!