Case Studies > CSC Generation's Deployment of Abnormal Security to Combat BEC Attacks

CSC Generation's Deployment of Abnormal Security to Combat BEC Attacks

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

Abnormal Security
Office 365
VendorBase

Tech Stack

AI
Office 365 APIs

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Cost Savings
Productivity Improvements
Customer Satisfaction

Technology Category

Cybersecurity & Privacy - Identity & Authentication Management
Cybersecurity & Privacy - Security Compliance
Cybersecurity & Privacy - Application Security

Applicable Industries

Retail

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Procurement

Use Cases

Fraud Detection
Cybersecurity
Remote Control

Services

System Integration
Cybersecurity Services

About The Customer

CSC Generation is a holding company for famous retail brands such as DirectBuy, One Kings Lane, Z Gallerie, and Sur La Table. Part retailer, part investment bank, and part tech company, CSC’s rapid growth is fueled by the combination of acquisitions and digital transformation of the retail brands toward e-commerce. Headquartered in Gardena, CA, CSC Generation operates within the private equity and technology sectors and employs over 1,000 people. The company’s strategy involves acquiring retail brands and transforming them through digital innovation, making it a significant player in the retail and technology industries.

The Challenge

Business Email Compromise (BEC) has been growing at a breakneck pace over the past several years. Today, it represents more than half of all cyberthreat related financial losses according to the 2019 FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) report. BEC attacks are sophisticated threats that leverage social engineering to target employees, who then unwittingly purchase gift cards, redirect payroll deposits or pay fraudulent invoices. As a holding company for retail brands, CSC is a primary target for BEC attacks due to its complex supply chain. Invoice fraud attacks, where attackers pose as suppliers, leverage the trusted relationships of external third parties to redirect legitimate invoice payments into an attackers’ bank account. Attackers have turned their focus toward the retail segment due to the sheer volume of suppliers and the fact that business invoices represent significantly greater value than payroll or gift card fraud. Compounding these issues is CSC’s growth strategy that is fueled by acquisition. The integration of new retail brands, their unique business processes and suppliers, create a dynamic that challenges any systems that cannot adapt to a constantly evolving environment. Traditional security policies become obsolete almost overnight.

The Solution

CSC quickly deployed Abnormal Security by integrating in minutes via native Office 365 APIs. Without any configuration required, Abnormal Security’s AI automatically developed a deep understanding of the people in the organization and their business relationships. Abnormal automatically mapped CSC’s complex supply chain across its multiple retail brands, incorporating the knowledge from VendorBase, Abnormal’s global, federated data of vendor behaviors and associated risk scores to identify and stop attacks from compromised vendors. These Business Insights provide the critical baseline for identifying anomalous behaviors to stop BEC and other socially engineered attacks.

Operational Impact

Immediately upon integrating, Abnormal Security began identifying and blocking various BEC attacks: from executive impersonation attacks to invoice fraud attempts from established vendors.
Abnormal Security also began to provide real-time detection of user accounts that were compromised. This includes the ability to identify incidents where compromised passwords were used to successfully authenticate, but failed MFA.
These detections and automated remediations provided significant time savings for the security team from lengthy manual response processes.
CSC’s multiple brands are consolidated into a single Abnormal Security dashboard, enabling consistent protection throughout the enterprise.
Given CSC’s strategy to continue acquiring new brands, Abnormal Security supports the future acquisitions of CSC across any cloud platform.

Quantitative Benefit

Abnormal Security represents more than half of all cyberthreat related financial losses according to the 2019 FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) report.