Cisco recently released a new study detailing the current state and trends of cyber crimes. In response, Cisco has also developed a pair of new security solutions to meet these foes head on.
Both of these solutions under Cisco’s IronPort security products umbrella, and they are designed to combat sophisticated email and spam threats while providing users a more secure way to manage their corporate email accounts.
Starting with the IronPort Outbreak Filters, this feature is designed to fight off targeted attacks, which Cisco cites as the more lucrative, and therefore popular, form of cyber crime these days. (Just look at the government email systems hacked in several countries, including the United States, as part of the AntiSec campaign.)
The filters are rather seamless (at least in theory) on the end user’s part. The Outbreak filters run on a custom-built engine configured to identify messages that Cisco has determined to be probable targeted attacks. So, when a user opens an email that fits within this category, the system rewrites the URLs embedded in those messages to protect the user’s device and data.
From there, the user clicks on the link, and the web content runs through Cisco’s own filters in its cloud environment to scan and identify malware. Cisco touts the IronPort Outbreak Filters as a strong layer of protection for “low volume attacks.”
Then there’s Business Class Email, which is a much more encompassing solution. More pointedly, Nick Edwards, the director of Cisco’s security technology business unit described it as “a new approach to email security enabled by the network and the cloud” when speaking at a media event in San Bruno, Calif. on June 30.
Business Class Email focuses on four main features: automatic user identification, embedded
email controls, strong security and universal device support. Security is actually the most straightforward facet as it utilizes Cisco’s existing IronPort Email Encryption technology and authentication standards.
Some of the new embedded email controls consist of the following useful functions: Message Recall,
Read Receipt and Message Expiration.
Automatic User Identification is where Cisco really incorporates its existing products for authenticating users upon logging in. That includes the Cisco Registered Envelope Service, Cisco IronPort WSA and WebEx.
As for universal device support, that’s the goal as plug-ins will be designed for PCs, smartphones and tablets. As for the operating systems, support for these features will be enabled on the iPhone initially, followed by Android devices next year.
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