When email gateway security got good enough to spot most malware-bearing malicious emails, cyber crooks got wise and added sophisticated phishing techniques to their repertoire. Because phishing emails don’t have any malicious code in them, traditional gateway defenses couldn’t detect them.
So, the security industry (with Barracuda leading the way, naturally) got to work developing new technologies and strategies for spotting and blocking these new threats.
One important advance was the development of sophisticated new security awareness training solutions like Barracuda Security Awareness Training. After all, if you can’t keep phishing emails from reaching inboxes, ensuring that recipients can spot and report them is the next best thing.
But of course it’s not foolproof. Anyone can make a mistake when distracted or in a hurry. Heck, I’ve been working in IT security for more than 20 years, and just last week I clicked on a link in a text that I realized a few seconds later was an obvious phishing attempt.
So, in addition to smarter users, combating phishing requires smarter security. And that’s what’s driven the development of AI-powered inbox-protection solutions like Barracuda Phishing and Impersonation Protection.
These solutions use APIs and machine learning to analyze traffic patterns using a wide variety of parameters — e.g., sender, recipient, geolocation, time of day, day of the week, and many others — to identify anomalous communications that indicate malicious intent. This enables them to block the vast majority of phishing attempts.
Now, do you think the bad guys saw the development of AI-based anti-phishing and decided to give up and start earning an honest living? No, of course you don’t. As anyone could have predicted, they started coming up with new ways to evade even these solutions — meaning that those of us on the side of truth and justice have had to develop new capabilities to defeat them.
By Tony Burgess
This article originally appeared on Journey Notes, the Barracuda blog.
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