Cyveillance Launches First Social Engineering Protection Appliance

PRESS RELEASE

FAIRFAX, Va., June 6, 2011 -- Cyveillance, a world leader in cyber intelligence, today announced the U.S. based launch of the Cyveillance Social Engineering Protection ApplianceTM (SEPA), the industry’s first security solution designed to detect highly targeted social engineering attacks. This unique solution protects enterprise employees from falling victim to these attacks and exposing valuable intellectual property and sensitive information. SEPA goes beyond currently available signature and malware detection technologies to examine email content and context, analyze real-time interaction with embedded web-links, access cloud-based intelligence, and leverage the cyber-footprint of the enterprise to detect targeted attacks.

Highly targeted social engineering attacks have become the new vector of choice for adaptive persistent adversaries as an undetected entry point to enterprise networks, with the ultimate goal to access highly proprietary and valuable intellectual property. Cyveillance has leveraged its proven technology and advanced threat intelligence to provide a security solution specifically designed to detect highly targeted social engineering attacks. Once an email has passed through the traditional email gateway, SEPA takes security one step further and inspects all email for indicators of social engineering attacks. Unlike existing enterprise security solutions that lack the key intelligence to effectively recognize a targeted, highly customized social engineering attack, SEPA is able to effectively examine the content and context of an email along with the methods and behavior of embedded Web page links to judge the trustworthiness of the email.

“Online criminals have graduated from stealing individual identities and single bank accounts, and have turned their sights on high-value employees that have access to valuable corporate intellectual property and information assets,” said Manoj Srivastava, Chief Technology Officer for Cyveillance. “The benefit of SEPA is that it allows organizations to put a new layer of security in place to protect against infiltration attempts before they even reach their intended target. This not only takes the erroneous click of an email out of the equation, it gives organizations the ability to gain insight into the types of attacks targeting their organization.”

Online criminals use highly targeted social engineering scams that leverage social media to acquire openly available personal information on their targets. When the desired target falls prey to the attack, the malicious actors then gain undetected access to the corporate network. Once inside, the criminals extract sensitive information, which poses potential damage to the enterprise, undermines customer confidence and causes irreparable damage to the brand and more. SEPA’s unique ability to rapidly detect and protect against these targeted social engineering attacks, ensures intellectual property, sensitive information and customer data remain safe, while helping organizations preserve revenue, business productivity and customer trust.

"With the rise of adaptive persistent adversaries and chaotic actors changing the threat landscape, organizations using conventional means of threat assessments and enterprise security will remain vulnerable to unconventional attacks," said Josh Corman, Research Director for Enterprise Security at The 451 Group. "As attackers shift from targeting weak systems to weak applications and people, Enterprises must invest in greater visibility and detection - better matching attacker methods and motives. The best adversaries have transcended reverse engineering and embraced social engineering. The best defenders will adapt in kind."

SEPA is intelligently tailored to each enterprise environment to scan messages for suspicious indicators and key organization-specific parameters to protect against new forms of social engineering attacks. The advanced detection capabilities include: