Case Study

Prospect Capital Management Bankson BlackBerry for Safety and Security
Prospect CapitalManagementIndustry:
Financial Services
Location:
New York, NY
Product:
CylanceGUARD®,
CylancePROTECT®,
CylanceOPTICS®
On March 1, 2020, New York Governor Andrew Mark Cuomo announced thefirst confirmed case of the novel coronavirus in New York City. Three weeks
later, on March 20, he issued an executive order closing the physical offices of
all non-essential businesses. Among them was BlackBerry customer, Prospect
Capital Management, a private debt and equity investment advisor to Prospect
Capital Corporation and Priority Income Fund, each with thousands ofshareholders across the United States.
Prospect Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Steven Elliott and Chief
Technology Officer (CTO) Al Faella had to move swiftly to ensure that Prospect’s
newly remote workforce retained uninterrupted access to the company’s IT
systems and data. A scant three days before the shutdown, BlackBerry® Security
Services consultants had completed onboarding CylanceGUARD® and begun
actively monitoring and defending Prospect’s endpoint security infrastructure.

Deployment:
220 endpoints
Website:www.prospectcap.com

Author’s Note: TheCylancePROTECT, CylanceOPTICS
and CylanceGUARD solutions wereformerly known as BlackBerryProtect, BlackBerry Optics andBlackBerry Guard
BlackBerry’s Cloud-nativeCylanceOPTICS andCylancePROTECT run on the AWS
cloud and provide on-device threat
detection and remediation acrossyour organization—in milliseconds.
BlackBerry products are available
through the AWS Marketplace.

The timing was fortuitous. Recognizing an opportunity to exploit the COVID-19 crisis,
cyber-criminals quickly launched a massive spam and phishing campaign. Between
the second and third weeks of March 2020, email scams and phishing attacks spiked
by an unprecedented 436%, and breaches increased by 175% over the year
before.1“Thanks to [CylanceGUARD], we weren’t affected,” says Elliott. “It gave us
confidence knowing we were protected if an employee fell victim to a phishingattack, or mistakenly opened a weaponized document.”“[CylanceGUARD] hasenabled us todramatically increase
our cyber resilience
while reducing the time

Prospect’s Commitment to Cyber Resilience

we spend on routine

CylanceGUARD was the latest in a series of strategic upgrades Faella and Elliott
had previously made to the company’s security infrastructure. “Prospect’s
mission is to generate long-term value for our portfolio companies, private equity
sponsors, and investors,” says Faella. “This begins with ensuring that thesensitive client, partner, and investment data our analysts rely upon to conductbusiness is never exposed, ransomed, or stolen by cybercriminals.”security management.

“We had also grown tired of the administrative overhead of managing a
traditional signature-based antivirus,” adds Faella. “A small team like ours
can’t afford to spend hours every week downloading and installing signature
files, or reimaging systems that become infected because a signature for azero-day threat hasn’t been developed. It was clear to us that the reactive
approach to cyber-defense had become obsolete.”
In early 2017, Elliott and Faella invited BlackBerry and three other firms
to participate in a Proof of Concept (POC) evaluation of their next-gen endpoint
protection products. “[CylancePROTECT®] achieved a perfect test score,
preventing the execution of every sample of malware and ransomware we threw
at it,” says Elliott. “This was an impressive performance, especially when
you consider the BlackBerry agent’s small footprint and minimal
resource requirements.”
In June 2017, Prospect formally selected CylancePROTECT as its new endpoint
protection platform. The deployment launched shortly thereafter. For
Prospect employees, the process was completely transparent. “There were noworkflow or operational issues whatsoever,” says Elliott.

It was the perfect
fit for our needs.”-- Al Faella, Chief Technology Officer,
Prospect Capital Management“Thanks to[CylanceGUARD], weweren’t affected. It gave
us confidence knowing
we were protected if anemployee fell victim to aphishing attack, or
mistakenly opened a

Hoping for The Best – Planning for The WorstThreat groups are increasingly utilizing stolen credentials, rather than malware,
to compromise systems and achieve their actions on objectives.
Therefore, resilient organizations complement their endpoint protection
controls with endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions capable ofstopping living-off-the-land attacks. “We’ve never been breached, but it would
be irresponsible to assume it could never happen,” says Faella.

weaponized document.”-- Steven Elliott,
Chief Information Security Officer,
Prospect Capital Management

In the Fall of 2019, Prospect began assessing CylanceOPTICS® and three other
EDR solutions. “All of the products we evaluated had strengths,” says Elliott.
“It came down to which one we thought would produce the least noise.
We concluded that [CylanceOPTICS] had the most flexible detection andresponse framework, which would allow us to fine-tune its detection rules tominimize false positives.”
BlackBerry

Case Study: Prospect Capital Management | 2

“We also knew it takes considerable expertise to effectively implement
and manage an EDR solution, so we were intrigued when we learned
about [CylanceGUARD]” adds Faella.
“Now, in addition to industry-leading security controls, we were being offered aSecurity Operations Center to monitor our environment, triage alerts, hunt forthreats, and keep us informed about potential attacks,” says Elliott. “It was theperfect fit for our needs.”“And with theBlackBerry Security
Operations Centerteam watching our“[CylanceGUARD] enables organizations to prevent security incidents without
adding staff or management overhead,” says John Vatz, BlackBerry
Account Executive. “The same security experts who build BlackBerrysolutions manage them for you.”backs, we’re confident

The subsequent upgrade from CylancePROTECT to CylanceGUARD wentsmoothly. “Faella and Elliott have done an exemplary job of seamlessly
integrating BlackBerry security solutions into Prospect’s infrastructure,” says
Vatz. “They’ve achieved the twin goals of securing their endpoints andmaintaining employee productivity.”safely and securely.

“Since then, we haven’t missed a beat,” says Faella. “[CylanceGUARD] hasenabled us to dramatically increase our cyber resilience while reducing thetime we spend on routine security management. We’ve retained complete
visibility and management control over our IT environment.”“And with the BlackBerry Security Operations Center team watching ourbacks, we’re confident our employees can work from home both safely andsecurely. Our partnership with BlackBerry gives us an enduring sense ofsecurity and peace of mind,” concludes Elliott.
®

our employees canwork from home both
Our partnership withBlackBerry gives us
an enduring senseof security andpeace of mind.”-- Steven Elliott,
Chief Information Security Officer,
Prospect Capital Management

For more information, visit Cylance Endpoint Security from BlackBerry.

1 Abnormal Security Quarterly BEC Report for Q1 2020

About BlackBerryBlackBerry (NYSE: BB; TSX: BB) provides intelligent security software and services to enterprises andgovernments around the world. The company secures more than 500M endpoints including 150M carson the road today. Based in Waterloo, Ontario, the company leverages AI and machine learning to deliver
innovative solutions in the areas of cybersecurity, safety and data privacy solutions, and is a leader in
the areas of endpoint security management, encryption, and embedded systems. BlackBerry’s vision isclear — to secure a connected future you can trust.

For more information, visit BlackBerry.com and follow @BlackBerry.
2020 BlackBerry Limited. Trademarks, including but not limited to BLACKBERRY and EMBLEM Design are the trademarks or registeredtrademarks of BlackBerry Limited, and the exclusive rights to such trademarks are expressly reserved. All other trademarks are the propertyof their respective owners. BlackBerry is not responsible for any third-party products or services.
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