Barracuda Sentinel utilizes AI to prevent spear phishing and cyber fraud in real time
An interaction with Anshuman Singh, Senior Director Product Management, Application Security, Barracuda Networks on Barracuda Sentinel
1. Kindly highlight the key
cybersecurity threats in the industry today.
Spear phishing is rapidly becoming the most
significant security threat today. These targeted attacks are very
personalized, and often do not contain any malicious attachments or links,
making them very hard to detect.
2. What is spear phishing? How
different is it from phishing?
Phishing messages are mass emails that
typically contain a malicious link or attachment and aim to obtain credentials
or credit card information.
Spear phishing messages are highly
personalized where a criminal impersonates someone in the organization
(typically the CEO, CFO, or other Exec) and engages in conversation to build
trust. These targeted messages typically include no malicious attachments or links
– making them very hard to detect with existing email security solutions. Spear
phishing messages aim to get the victim to *do something (typically wire transfer
funds).
3. How does one stay safe from
phishing attacks?
Users today must remain vigilant and aware
when it comes to email and particularly if someone is requesting sensitive,
confidential, or personal information. Some of those best practices include:
Do not click on links or attachments in
emails, especially coming from an unknown source.
If it looks suspicious, contact the sender
via phone and confirm.
Keep an eye on the reply-to address which
is often different than actual sender in spear phishing attacks.
Enable two-factor authentication.
Change your passwords regularly, and do not
share passwords across multiple accounts.
We have several other great examples around
best practices and use cases on the blog at:
Threat Spotlights (real-life examples) –
https://blog.barracuda.com/tag/threat-spotlight/
Spear Phishing Blog – https://blog.barracuda.com/tag/spear-phishing/
4. Tell us more about the Barracuda Sentinel
Barracuda Sentinel utilizes AI to prevent
spear phishing and cyber fraud in real time. It combines three powerful layers
of defense into a comprehensive cloud solution against targeted attacks. First,
a proprietary artificial intelligence engine learns an organization’s existing
communications patterns in order to predict future attacks. Second, a domain
fraud protection layer helps organization’s set up and monitor DMARC to prevent
domain spoofing and cyber fraud. Third, a fraud simulation training layer
offers real-life spear phishing training to high-risk individuals inside the
company. Barracuda Sentinel connects directly to Office 365 via API – meaning,
there’s no impact to user experience or network performance, and it works along
any existing email security solution.
5. How is it different from
Barracuda’s other solutions.
Barracuda Essentials for Email Security
includes best-of-breed anti-spam, ransomware, malware, and phishing protection.
Barracuda Sentinel is a focused solution on
targeted attacks and spear phishing. It is the only solution on the market
today that uses AI and specializes in this type of protection. It works
alongside existing email security solutions (including Barracuda Essentials,
native Office 365/Exchange Online Protection, or others) to give comprehensive
protection against this type of attacks.
6. How does it help in dealing with
spear-phishing? What is the role of Artificial Intelligence in Barracuda
Sentinel?
At the heart of Barracuda Sentinel is the
proprietary AI engine. Barracuda Sentinel utilizes AI to learn communications
patterns and predict future attacks. The AI engine also helps to identify the
most high-risk individuals inside an organization.
7. Office 365 already has security
features. Do I really need additional protection?
Office 365 does not offer any native
security features designed to prevent spear phishing and stop this rapidly
growing, targeted attack.
