CASE STUDY

DevOps Company Strengthens
Security Resilience“Security-first” mindset drives a cloud email security strategy that includes comprehensive
protection before, during, and after an attack.

At-a-Glance
INDUSTRY
Based in San Francisco, theDevOps company enables teams
to run and secure cloud-computing
infrastructure.
CHALLENGE
Protect employees from targetedphishing without impacting mail flowor business operations.

In 2017, the company was in the early stages of its trajectory and knewthat their risk profile would quickly outstrip their ability to manage andmitigate phishing and other email attacks.
Cybercriminals were targeting both the leadership team and juniorsales engineers. “Not only do we receive credential theft and money
laundering attacks, we also see tailored messages designed to
extract confidential data, often around our customer infrastructure,”
said the senior security engineer. “While we are an extremely security
conscious organization, we needed a way to technically validate thelegitimacy of every email message.”

ENVIRONMENTTHE SEARCH IS ON FOR A COMPREHENSIVE CLOUD EMAILSECURITY SOLUTION>> Google G Suite>> Fast-paced business, reliant onemail performance>> Distributed workforce acrossmultiple locations>> Cloud-first IT strategy

After participating in several pilots with email security providers, thesecurity team found that the solutions failed to address targetedattacks. With a heavy reliance on threat intelligence and metadata
analysis, the tested email security solutions failed to give thecompany a holistic view of its email risk profile.

WHY GREATHORN?
>> Simple and fast cloud-based setup and management>> No interruptions to mail delivery>> Simple and effective email
remediation capabilities

CASE STUDY
CS-191021“When you look at just the metadata without looking at the broader
context of messaging at the company at large, you’re missing a good
20-30 percent of attacks,” explained the senior security engineer.
He continued, “Understanding targeted phishing requires you totake a step back and look at how it all connects. For example, thecommunication patterns and the relationships that are formed when
you send and receive messages. By examining these relationships,
this is how you can actually distinguish attack patterns.”

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A fellow CISO suggested to the company that theylook at GreatHorn as a potential solution. Unlike theoptions he had been evaluating, GreatHorn identified
the targeted types of threats the company worried aboutmost, automatically adjusting its analysis based on thecompany’s email interactions both at the macro and theindividual level.

GREATHORN PROVIDES THE COMPANY WITH MULTIPLE
LAYERS OF DEFENSE:
1.

Proactive threat detection that protects the 		company from both volumetric and targeted 		
phishing attempts

CLOUD EMAIL SECURITY THAT OFFERS PROTECTION
BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER AN EMAIL ATTACK

2.

Real-world, in-message warnings to educate and 		alert employees of suspicious emails

3.

Simple, effective, and thorough email remediation
capabilities. Security teams can quickly mitigate 		any malicious messages that may have landed in 		employee mailboxes

The DevOps company embodies a security-first mindset.
They’ve adopted “safe, sane, and pragmatic” processes
that “don’t get in the way of employees being able todo their jobs.” So, the security team wanted to find asolution that capitalized on the trust and accountability
that the company had already instilled in its employees,
a way to tap into their inherent knowledge to bolster
security.
“We needed a way to prove the legitimacy of any given
email message without compromising the privacy of ouremployees. GreatHorn gave us exactly that. If you likea tool that you don’t have to babysit, GreatHorn’s an
obvious choice. I would strongly recommend GreatHorn.
The value is real. It’s scalable. GreatHorn will help you
move faster, no matter the size of your team.”You can’t protect what you don’tknow. GreatHorn has given us adeep understanding of our risk
profile and an incredible levelof awareness into our overall
security posture.
- The company’s senior security engineer

CASE STUDY
CS-191021

The company’s senior security engineer said, “Mostemail security solutions rely on a premise of dogmatic,
authoritative control that runs counter to our corporate
culture. We need to be able to trust our employees
and give them accountability to do their jobs and keep
the company safe. But they can’t do that if they don’t
have the right information to make good email security
decisions.”“You can’t protect what you don’t know. GreatHorn has
given us a deep understanding of our risk profile and anincredible level of awareness into our overall security
posture. We now know what kinds of information ouremployees are being asked to provide and which users
are at the highest risk, and we can tie that back to ourbusiness processes and training to reduce risk evenfurther.”
Before GreatHorn, the security team had two options
when they were experiencing an active email incident:
struggle with their native email provider’s API to manuallyfind and remove the emails or build a custom script tointercept them.
“We’ve gone from an initial turnaround time of 48
hours at best to detect and respond to business email
compromise to having instant alerts on our phones anddesktops, catching the events in near real-time andpreventing them from escalating. Using GreatHorn, we
can now mitigate phishing attacks in five or so minutes.”

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