Riverbed Technology controls phishing and fraudulent business emails with Proofpoint
The Challenge
- Safeguard sensitive communications from phishing, fraudulent emails and other threats
- Strengthen internal security best practices
- Improve communication and accountability to management
The Solution
- Proofpoint Email Protection
- Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection
- Proofpoint Threat Response Auto-Pull
- Proofpoint Email Fraud Defense
- Proofpoint Security Awareness Training
The Results
- AI-powered email security protects organization from malware and non-malware attacks
- Accelerated threat response time to users from days to minutes
- Applied training and tools to strengthen security culture
The Challenge
Strengthening security and minimizing manual tasks
Riverbed offers solutions that enable organizations to visualize, optimize, remediate and accelerate the performance of any network for any application, helping them mitigate cyber security risk and enhance the digital experience for all end users. This innovative technology provider is focused on minimizing security risks not only for customers, but for its 1,700 users as well. However, its existing email and web security platform was beginning to show its age.
“Our prior email security solution was very generic, and performing simple tasks such as spam filtering required using specific keywords,“ said Eddy Liang, security operations manager at Riverbed Technology. “And phishing attacks are always getting smarter, so we’re constantly adding to our block list, which creates a great deal of overhead. And to make matters worse, every phishing campaign we encountered could take us a week to resolve.”
Riverbed needed to upgrade its aging email security platform, to save administrators time, and keep pace with the latest email threats and scams. The organization was also seeking to build a stronger security culture, to help empower employees with best practices and tools to work more safely.
The Solution
Updated email security and training for today’s threats
Liang and his team started by upgrading Riverbed’s core email gateway to Proofpoint Email Protection, a complete email security platform that blocks phishing, malware and other advanced threats. The deployment went smoothly, and Proofpoint Professional Services helped Riverbed realize the value of its investment quickly.
“We run a very lean shop, and we could have never done it if it weren’t for the Proofpoint Professional Services team, which helped guide us through our entire journey,” said Liang. “The maturity and completeness of the product, together with the in-person and remote support, were the reasons we went with Proofpoint.”
Business email compromise (BEC) attacks are also an increasing concern for Riverbed, so the organization augmented its email gateway solution with Proofpoint Email Fraud Defense.
“Over the years, Riverbed has made several acquisitions, and accumulated a lot of external domains,” said Liang. “Locking down our domains had not been as much of a priority. We wanted to implement Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) to gain more visibility into our domains. And we chose Proofpoint Email Fraud Defense to help us simplify the journey.”
To help educate users and help them respond safely to sophisticated attacks, the team chose Proofpoint Security Awareness Training. This solution helps employees better understand threats through targeted education, simulated attacks, and best practices recommendations.
The Results
Minimizing phishing and email fraud
Proofpoint Email Protection classifies and stops phishing emails, malware and other threats. It provides a modern approach that is powered by machine learning.
“In the past, we had to work to mitigate new phishing campaigns about once a week,” said Liang. “Our team had to determine what the payload looked like, whether a user had executed it, and then work with the networking team to modify the firewall or block it. Since having deployed Proofpoint three years ago, we’ve seen maybe three campaigns where we had to spend much less time mitigating these kinds of issues.”
If a questionable email does get through, Proofpoint Threat Response Auto-Pull (TRAP) lets Liang and his team analyze and quarantine it after delivery.
“If an individual user clicks on a link, TRAP can generally handle most of the process,” said Liang. “If a user has a question about a specific interaction, it takes us maybe 30 minutes to examine it with Proofpoint tools and intelligence, compared to a day or two in the past.”
Proofpoint Email Fraud Defense has also played an important role in helping the organization implement DMARC security, and protect its brand against email fraud attacks.
“The whole process of turning on DMARC was a huge accomplishment,” said Liang. “Our Proofpoint consultant was critical to our success. He guided us through the process and flushed out potential risks along the way. We identified about 650 domains, determined which ones were sending, and apply DMARC authentication and protection to them.”
People are always a key part of threat mitigation, and Proofpoint Security Awareness Training has helped Riverbed educate its users on best practices. This helps minimize their interactions with possible email threats.
“You must continuously reinforce training, and our monthly education campaigns have helped us reduce phishing click rates from 30% down to about 8%,” said Liang.
With its broad suite of email security solutions, Riverbed not only has the tools and technologies needed to protect its organization and customers, but a strong strategy and culture that minimizes risk.