Avanan > Case Studies > How This Manufacturer Cleaned Up Phishing with Avanan

How This Manufacturer Cleaned Up Phishing with Avanan

Customer Company Size

Mid-size Company

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

Avanan
Microsoft 365
Trend Micro

Tech Stack

Cloud Email Security
APIs
AI

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Digital Expertise

Technology Category

Cybersecurity & Privacy - Cloud Security

Applicable Functions

Discrete Manufacturing
Business Operation

Use Cases

Cybersecurity
Intrusion Detection Systems

Services

Cybersecurity Services
Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

About The Customer

Blue Emerald is a large manufacturer based in the Southeast. The company has been struggling with a major credential harvesting campaign. Their 200 users were inundated with scores of these attacks daily. They were being pointed to websites that look real, but were actually meant to steal passwords, take money and other information. The company had been using a Secure Email Gateway from Trend Micro to protect their Microsoft 365 email environment. But it was becoming too cumbersome for the Director of Information Technology, Chris Schneider. Recently, some of his policy settings that enabled notifications about email forwarding of potentially sensitive information weren’t being triggered; scores of phishing emails were just sitting in each of his colleague’s inboxes; plus, a confusing user interface made it difficult for him to track down each mishap.

The Challenge

Blue Emerald, a large manufacturer in the Southeast, was struggling with a major credential harvesting campaign. Their 200 users were inundated with scores of these attacks daily. The company had already deployed a Secure Email Gateway from Trend Micro to protect its Microsoft 365 environment, but it wasn’t doing enough. The Director of Information Technology, Chris Schneider, was particularly frustrated by one attack that had passed through Trend Micro’s scanners. One user got a phishing email that claimed to be from Bank of America. It wasn’t. But because of the onslaught of phishing emails aimed at his user and the lack of clarity from Trend Micro, Schneider didn’t know about it until days later. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time that attack has reached inboxes. As an administrator, he only got an alert if that email was forwarded. Sometimes, that can take a couple of days. Sometimes it doesn’t happen at all.

The Solution

Blue Emerald decided to switch to Avanan, a cloud email security platform. Avanan sits in-line, behind email, and acts as an additional layer of security. Its patented AI is trained on the attacks that Microsoft misses. Plus, it actually is able to see what Trend Micro misses. So it can see these attacks, learn from them, and then stop them. Unlike Trend Micro, Avanan installs as an API and protects each Microsoft 365 inbox individually. So not only can Schneider now protect against internal threats, but he can also monitor and guard against account takeovers and remediate accordingly. Finally, Avanan has detailed reporting and policy options that can be configured in whatever way a company likes. Blue Emerald decided to set an admin alert whenever an email is quarantined or when there’s a suspicious phishing attempt, though they appreciate that they can change that if they decide to.

Operational Impact

Phishing has been significantly reduced.
The ease of use of Avanan has been beneficial for the IT team.
The policy tools mean that the IT team knows exactly what’s going on.
Avanan alerted the IT team when there was an anomalous login from Canada, providing a sense of relief that Avanan would alert them about it.
Because of the low cost of implementation, Blue Emerald was able to secure its SharePoint environment as well, which was a huge relief to the IT team given that they have seen spoofs of those pages before would fool their users.