Virtru and Area 1 Security Partner to Deliver Comprehensive Cloud Email Protection

Joint Solution Combines Seamless, End-to-End Encryption with Advanced Cloud Email Security

Area 1 was acquired by Cloudflare on April 1, 2022. Learn more.

WASHINGTON and REDWOOD CITY, Calif., August 11, 2020 – Virtru, the new standard in data protection, and Area 1 Security, the first and only preemptive email security company, today announced a partnership to deliver comprehensive enterprise-class email protection. Available now, the joint offering combines Virtru’s seamless email encryption with Area 1’s advanced anti-phishing capabilities to help enterprises strengthen their security posture and ensure privacy and compliance while maximizing cloud collaboration and ROI.

Organizations have rapidly adopted cloud email infrastructures. According to Gartner’s most recent Email Security Market Guide, more than 70 percent of corporate email will be cloud-native – principally Microsoft Office 365 and Google Gmail – by 2021. However, the majority of these organizations use email to share and store sensitive data; 90 percent have cloud data governance challenges due to limited visibility and control; and most organizations are not compliant with data privacy regulations.

Traditional defenses such as secure email gateways (SEGs) are woefully inadequate in protecting today’s cloud-driven, distributed global workforces. These approaches cannot proactively hunt threats or protect messages and attachments shared through cloud-based workflows beyond applications and perimeters, and lack the critical ease of use capabilities that ensure adoption and ROI. Further underscoring their limitations, legacy SEGs, as well as cloud email suites, routinely miss more than 30 percent of phishing campaigns – the root cause of 95 percent of cyber breaches.

With a best-of-breed, comprehensive solution comprising Virtru Email Protection and Area 1 Horizon, Virtru and Area 1 seamlessly combine end-to-end encryption and advanced cloud email security. Area 1 discovers malicious sites and payloads under construction an average of 24 days before phishing campaigns launch, blocking attacks from ever reaching the inbox. Beyond the inbox, Virtru protects email messages and attachments through user friendly, end-to-end encryption that is transparently integrated into the most commonly used productivity applications, including Gmail, Google Drive, and Microsoft Outlook.

“Legacy on-premise defenses that try to bolt-on features to mirror cloud architectures fail to deliver on the promise of the cloud. Traditional email gateways don’t scale, don’t offer anything new to Office 365 and Gmail users, and most importantly, don’t prevent breaches,” said Area 1 Security President and CEO Patrick Sweeney. “Organizations ready to take their cloud email and messaging to the next level need cloud-native, API-first security solutions like Area 1 and Virtru.”

“More than 20,000 organizations worldwide trust Virtru for data security and privacy protection. And we’re excited to join forces with Area 1 to deliver an advanced email solution,” said Virtru Co-founder and CEO John Ackerly. “Though vital for connection and communication, traditional and cloud email offerings remain deficient in data-centric security controls. Area 1 and Virtru are closing the chasm between promise and protection with best-in-class email security that fosters faster adoption, facilitates secure collaboration among remote workforces, and accelerates ROI for enterprises.”

Together, Virtru and Area 1 are providing organizations with:

• End-to-End Email Security – Virtru’s end-to-end email encryption prevents unauthorized access to messages and attachments throughout their lifecycle, maintaining privacy and ensuring regulatory compliance (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR, ITAR) even as they’re shared with collaborators. Only Area 1 preemptively thwarts Business Email Compromise, credential harvesting, ransomware and other cloud email threats, and stops phishing across email, web, social and network attack vectors.
• Visibility and Control – Virtru’s granular access controls and persistent visibility streamline audit workflows, ensuring data governance and security beyond the inbox. Area 1’s detailed detection forensics and Autonomous Phish SOC improves security response times, allowing for at-a-glance visibility into threats, and reduces time spent on phishing investigations by up to 90 percent.
• Maximum ROI via Ease of Use and Administration – Deployed organization-wide as a seamless browser extension, Virtru protections are on-demand and intuitive – embedded directly within the native Gmail and Outlook UIs – empowering customers to get up and running in minutes. Area 1’s fully elastic, cloud-native service integrates quickly with email providers and existing security systems, with flexible deployment options that are as easy to configure as setting up a Gmail account.

The complete solution will be available via both companies’ direct sales organizations and channel partnerships. For more information on Virtru’s partnership and joint solution with Area 1, please visit www.virtru.com/partners/area-1-security.

About Virtru

At Virtru, we empower organizations to easily unlock the power of data while maintaining control, everywhere it’s stored and shared. Creators of TDF (Trusted Data Format), the open industry standard for persistent data protection, Virtru provides flexible, easy to use, and trusted privacy technologies built on its data protection platform that govern access to data throughout its full lifecycle – from creation to transmission, storage, analysis, and sharing. For more information, visit www.virtru.com or follow us on Twitter at @virtruprivacy.

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