Avanan > Case Studies > A Great Gift: How This Company Found Better BEC Protection with Avanan

A Great Gift: How This Company Found Better BEC Protection with Avanan

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

Avanan
Barracuda

Tech Stack

Microsoft 365

Impact Metrics

Customer Satisfaction

Applicable Industries

Telecommunications

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Use Cases

Cybersecurity

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

About The Customer

State of Art Comms is a wireless communication equipment provider based in the Midwest. The company has been using Barracuda as their Secure Email Gateway for years. However, they have been facing issues with the system, particularly with Business Email Compromise attacks. These attacks were getting through the system, and even good internal and customer emails were being blocked. This was severely hampering their business processes. The company was looking for a solution that could do a better job of stopping malicious emails while ensuring that important emails got through.

The Challenge

State of Art Comms, a wireless communication equipment provider, was facing issues with their existing Secure Email Gateway, Barracuda. They were experiencing a high number of Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, where malicious emails were getting through to end-users. In some instances, even legitimate internal and customer emails were being blocked, disrupting business processes. The company was in need of a solution that could effectively stop these attacks while ensuring important emails were not blocked. Despite having a few months left on their contract with Barracuda, the company decided to look for a more effective solution.

The Solution

In their search for a better solution, State of Art Comms came across Avanan, a cloud email security platform. Avanan's approach to defending against BECs was unique and more effective. It uses machine learning algorithms combined with role-based, contextual analysis of previous conversations to identify threats that external gateways miss. On day one, it analyzes one year of email conversations to build a trusted reputation network. It also has the ability to scan and quarantine internal emails and files in real-time, protecting against East-West attacks and other insider threats. Avanan also offered easy solutions for Allow and Block Lists, which was a major issue with Barracuda. Impressed by Avanan's capabilities, State of Art Comms decided to not just supplement Barracuda with Avanan, but to replace it completely when the contract ends.

Operational Impact

State of Art Comms has been using Avanan for a few months and they are glad they made the switch. They have seen a significant reduction in Business Email Compromise attacks.
Avanan's patented inline protection technology has provided the internal context needed to identify whether an email from the CEO is actually from the CEO and not a fake.
Customer emails are no longer being blocked, which was a major issue with the previous system. This has improved customer satisfaction and business processes.