Area 1 Security Announces New Horizon PhishGuard™ Service

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Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit, September 17, 2020 – Area 1 Security, the first and only preemptive Cloud Email Security provider, today announced Horizon PhishGuard™ at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit 2020. Delivering industry-first, end-to-end phish and targeted attack management and response, Horizon PhishGuard services include active fraud response, insider threat notification and response, and tailored email-based threat hunting for security teams and cybersecurity VARs and MSSPs.

Email phishing attacks are still the No. 1 vector for perpetrating cyber fraud. Business Email Compromise phishing attacks (BECs) have cost businesses over $26 billion in losses, according to the FBI. And as noted in the new Gartner Market Guide for Email Security (G00722358), “Dramatic increases in the volume and success of phishing attacks and migration to cloud email require a reevaluation of email security controls and processes.”

Horizon PhishGuard provides expert SOC triage, analysis, and remediation assistance to provide customers with deep, real-time analysis beyond their immediate capabilities to address the growing number of user-submitted suspicious email reports, as well as legitimately malicious phish and BECs. It is built on the cloud-native Area 1 Horizon™ platform — a product that led to Area 1 being recognized as a Representative Vendor for Integrated Email Security Solutions in the 2020 Gartner Market Guide for Email Security — and the only platform that preemptively detects and stops phishing and targeted threats.

Horizon PhishGuard acts as an extension to security teams and SOCs to neutralize phishing campaigns before they cause damage. It works within the customer’s environment and VAR’s/MSSP’s infrastructure to deliver:

• Managed Email Security Operations
• Active BEC Fraud Defense
• Managed Email Threat Hunting
• Insider Threat Notification & Response
• Assigned Specialists with Advanced Email Security Expertise

A third of confirmed data breaches involve phishing, and 96% of phishing attacks come through email (source). Incentivized by the low barrier of entry and attractive economies of scale obtained from cloud email services like Gmail or Outlook, attackers have only increased phishing campaigns, putting the growing remote workforce at greater risk. Traditional email defenses — such as secure email gateways and Office 365 with Advanced Threat Protection — miss over 30% of phishing campaigns, and fail to identify link-less, malware-less BEC attacks.

Horizon PhishGuard’s customized services, notifications and response — on top of Area 1’s cloud-native Integrated Email Security Solution — ensure that customers and security solution providers and MSSPs take proactive action to prevent phishing damages, instead of remediation after the fact.

As Andrew Bonillo, Vice President & Chief Information Security Officer of Ciena notes, “Business Email Compromise attacks are a top security concern for organizations. Area 1’s Managed Email Threat Hunting & Active Fraud Response allows security teams to proactively counter this constantly changing threat before damages occur.”

Thwart Active BEC Fraud and Insider Email-Based Threats, in Real-Time

BEC phishing typically evades traditional email defenses and cloud email suites because these highly targeted scams evolve over lengthy message threads with trusted (but compromised) employees, peers and suppliers. Detecting and preventing these threats calls for Gartner-recommended “anti-phishing technology that can accurately detect BEC and account takeover accounts.”

“Active fraud arising from targeted phishing is extremely difficult to detect, and extremely expensive to remediate. Spikes in user-reported suspicious emails also strain limited cybersecurity resources,” said Blake Darché, chief security officer and co-founder of Area 1 Security. “Even with automation and an in-house security team, most organizations, VARs, and MSSPs need the guidance of dedicated experts to deal with sophisticated BEC fraud attacks and advanced phishing campaigns. Horizon PhishGuard’s end-to-end services fill this need, and act as an immediate force multiplier for existing security teams.”

Area 1 Horizon is the only email security platform capable of preemptively detecting and stopping phishing and targeted threats, such as all four types of BEC attacks. Thanks to techniques such as campaign source analytics, conversational context analysis, partner social graphing and more, the Area 1 Security solution is on pace to stop more than $1 billion in actie BEC fraud in 2020 alone.

This protection is layered into Horizon PhishGuard to provide customers, VARs, and MSSPs with:

• Active monitoring of the email environment
• Automatic notifications of active BEC communications
• Automatic blocking and quarantining of malicious BEC messages
• Retraction of confirmed malicious messages

Scale Your Security Team with Horizon PhishGuard

BEC fraud is just one of the subtle but serious threats that Area 1 Security catches. Horizon PhishGuard’s Managed Email Threat Hunting also provides:

• Custom YARA signatures based on threat analysis of customer environment
• Insider threat notifications and reports of potential internal malicious behavior
• Real-time indicators of compromise (IOCs) and campaign-specific indicators

In addition to providing security teams with better defense and faster response against potential threats, Horizon PhishGuard customers and partners will also get the benefit of expert security resources helping them with their email security needs.

Horizon PhishGuard will be available to all existing and new customers, Area 1 Select and Elite Partners, as well as Area 1 MSSPs, starting October 1, 2020. To learn more about scaling your security team and preventing fraud with Area 1 Security, read the blog and request a demo.