The Value of SOC2 and ISO27001 in Enhancing Customer Trust

In an era of ever-evolving cybersecurity threats, a strong security posture for your cloud-based applications is paramount. Certifications such as SOC2 and ISO27001 represent an international benchmark that demonstrate a product’s robustness in security, service resiliency, and sound data management practices. Recently, our product, Secure Email Threat Defense, successfully completed the SOC2 certification process, and I’d like to share our experience to highlight the importance of these certifications for security-conscious buyers.

To gain certification, our team had to show an accredited external auditor that Secure Email Threat Defense met or exceeded the requirements of SOC2 and ISO27001. In obtaining SOC2 Type 2 certification, we validated our adherence to the Trust Services Criteria: security, availability, and confidentiality. ISO27001 further demanded effective processes and controls to protect information systems and contained data.

These combined certifications assure our customers that Email Threat Defense:

◉ Operates in a secure, reliable, and responsible manner.

◉ Protects our customers’ information.

◉ Provides transparency in system development, deployment, and maintenance as evidenced in our SOC2 Type 2 report.

◉ Commits to independent audits that will validate the effectiveness of our controls, both procedurally and from an implementation perspective.

As part of the audit process, Email Threat Defense had to prove its commitment to internal processes and provide evidence of ongoing adherence to internal controls. Our efforts in access management, change management, business continuity, incident response, and vulnerability management were scrutinized.

In the area of access management, we showcased our commitment to best practices and granular access permissions, ensuring that customer data is protected at all times. When it comes to change management, we follow strict policies and require approval for all system changes, enabling us to deliver quality features quickly.

Our business continuity and incident response capabilities were also thoroughly reviewed. We demonstrated our service’s resiliency to upstream service failures within AWS and Azure, as well as our team’s robust incident response capabilities. In a disaster recovery scenario, we showed our ability to restore critical customer data, including Search and Reporting data.

Finally, in the realm of vulnerability management, we proved our ability to remediate vulnerabilities within industry-standard SLAs, thereby mitigating the risk of known and emerging threats.

By obtaining SOC2 and ISO27001 certifications, we have displayed our unwavering commitment to information security and to our customers, providing an additional layer of trust for our users. For security-conscious buyers, these certifications represent a reliable method for evaluating the security posture of cloud-based applications such as Email Threat Defense. These certifications are not merely symbolic badges; they indicate a level of trust that our customers can rely on  in an uncertain cybersecurity landscape. We’re proud of the work we’ve done to achieve this significant milestone and we will continue to prioritize security as we further develop, innovate, and optimize Email Threat Defense.

Source: cisco.com

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Real Users Speak: Cisco and the Elements of Robust Email Security

What does it take to implement robust email security? According to users of Cisco Email Security (ESA) on IT Central Station, it takes a combination of distinctive elements in an email security solution to attain this goal. These include sophisticated filtering, built-in intelligence and policy definition and enforcement capabilities. The system should also be easy to use.

Real users share their unbiased opinions on what makes Cisco Email Security the #1 ranked product in IT Central Station’s Messaging Security category.

Filtering out spam and phishing messages

Companies worry about employees clicking on malicious links in phishing emails or getting deluged with bogus spam messages. Indeed, the attack chain for a great many data breaches and ransomware attacks starts with an email to an unsuspecting person.  Effective email filtering is thus a compelling feature for an email security solution. IT Central Station members expressed this opinion.

For example, Michael L., a Network Security Engineer at Konga Online Shopping Ltd., a retailer with over 1,000 employees, acknowledged that Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA) “helped with mail filtering and load balancing between Exchange servers.” In particular, he singled out Cisco Email Security because, as he said, “Cisco Email Security enabled us to blockade domains that send these emails. Cisco Email Security gave us fantastic service. The filtering is something I found very valuable.”

“Initially, the most valuable feature for us was the SenderBase Reputation,” said a Regional ICT Security Officer at an energy/utilities company with over 10,000 employees. He added that it “reduced the number of emails that were even considered by the system by a huge number, before we ended up processing them to get through the spam, the marketing, and the virus-attached emails. Since then, customized filtering has been very effective and useful for us.”

A Security Engineer at an energy/utilities company similarly remarked, “We have seen ROI. Only 70 percent of phishing and bad emails are getting through. There are very few solutions that boast this percentage of filtering. This level of filtering helps our company. The most valuable features are Advanced Malware Protection, URL filtering, and of course Reputation Filtering.”

Built-in intelligence

The volume and variety of email translates into a need for security that’s augmented by machine intelligence. Cisco ESA users spoke to this ability, with John A., a Network Security Engineer at a small tech services company, noting that, “Cisco was scanning our emails with their own intelligence. I liked that.” An Information Security Analyst at a healthcare company also commented on Cisco ESA’s Intelligent Multi-Scan (IMS) engine, saying “it does a good job, right out-of-the-box, of blocking the vast majority of things that should be blocked.”

For the energy company Regional ICT Security Officer, built-in email security intelligence came in the form of Talos. As he put it, “Instead of just specifically stopping known spam sources and using that to stop virus-infected emails, the Talos solution which they’re now providing has a lot of attraction because it helps to prevent phishing emails.”

Policy enforcement

IT Central Station members addressed the issue of security policy definition and enforcement as an element of strong email security. As Keith K., a Senior Email Engineer at a legal firm with over 1,000 employees explained, “We use it [Cisco ESA] for different policies or as another scanning engine, e.g., on the desktop or for data coming through another email gateway.” He added, “The most valuable feature is the policies or rules that you can put on it. This definitely helps with routing specific things to different destinations within our organization, or even potentially blocking when something is coming in and out.”

Setu S., a System Administrator at a financial services firm with over 1,000 employees echoed this sentiment, sharing that his team uses Cisco Email Security for “customized policies based on our security measures using this tool to scan the emails in our inboxes.” He noted, “We also check all incoming emails. Because we can customize policies with it, we have good documentation.”

Ease of use

Email security is challenging enough that security professionals prefer solutions that are easy to use. In this context, Mir A., a Network Engineer at a hospitality company with over 10,000 employees, observed that Cisco ESA “was really easy to implement.” As he said, “Even a newcomer joining the company could easily implement it.” John A found that “anybody could use it. You don’t have to be familiar with IT to be able to handle navigating it. The deployment was quite easy.”

This user also noted, “GUI is self-explanatory: If you want to block emails, you want to erase emails, you do the IP address configuration and what your DNS is.” The healthcare Information Security Analyst said, “Black-listing and white-listing are highly intuitive and easy to do.”

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Defending Against The $5B Cybersecurity Threat – Business Email Compromise

If an average employee at your company got an email from an executive with an urgent request, would they question whether the email was coming from the actual sender? They probably wouldn’t. The reality is that most people would act on the request because of its time-sensitive nature. They assume that the IT team has the right technology in place to validate email senders so they can focus on doing their work. But this is why attackers succeed. Their target thinks the email is coming from someone they trust and consequently, their organization gets breached. This type of attack is called Business Email Compromise (BEC), email spoofing or spoof abuse. The FBI estimates it has cost companies $5.3B globally – far more than the $1B in 2016 for ransomware.

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Cisco Email Security is Top Solution

Billions of corporate messages flow back and forth on a daily basis. And with over 90% of breaches starting with an email, organizations today face a daunting challenge when choosing the best email security solution to stop emails with phishing links or malicious attachments that unleash ransomware, phishing or business email compromise attacks. Securing the most important business communication tool is a tall order indeed. This is why we’re proud to share that Cisco Email Security has been named Top Player on Radicati’s Market Quadrant for Secure Email Gateways 2017 for the second consecutive year.

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Deep Dive into AMP and Threat Grid integration with Cisco Email Security

In this blog post, we are going to dive deeper and explain the workflows of AMP and Threat Grid integration with Cisco Email Security (applies to both Cloud Email Security and on premise Email Security Appliance), as well as help administrators refine security posture in their organizations. Let’s start with a quick recap of how file reputation, file analysis and file retrospection work together in general.

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