In an era of fast-evolving digital threats and regulatory challenges, SafeGuard Cyber delivers a vital Communication Risk Report, offering key insights and strategies to help businesses protect their critical data and operations against the ever-present human threat in cybersecurity.
Message From SafeGuard Cyber CEO
Spurred by digital transformations and the pandemic, businesses have moved a lot of meetings and communications — internally, externally, and with customers — to workplace collaboration tools and cloud messaging apps such as Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, and Zoom. Companies today frequently discuss very sensitive topics over these apps with employees and customers. While communicating via these channels helps companies operate more efficiently, it naturally poses cybersecurity risks.
Chris Lehman
SafeGuard Cyber CEO
Emergent Digital Channels:
Pioneers in Sustained Customer Engagement
In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, supporting and understanding the customer journey is more complex and critical than ever. Emergent digital channels are not just the new norm; they are integral to maintaining deep, lasting customer relationships. Their significance in shaping a holistic customer experience is evident in the graph below.
According to S&P Global's Voice of the Customer Report:
Very important/important 
Moderately important
Not at all important/not important
These numbers highlight that for a majority, the integration of these channels into their strategy is not just optional — it's imperative.
Compliance Risks
Security Risks
The Changing Nature of Work
of North American office workers worked from home more than one day per week
had not worked remotely prior to COVID-19
of workers prefer a hybrid work environment
lower absenteeism
fewer quality defect
higher profitability
lower absenteeism
fewer quality defect
higher profitability
Technical Requirements
Secure Infrastructures
Flexible work environments require access to on-premises systems and data, and therefore most enterprises rely on employees using a VPN. However, organizations can’t trust that workers will always use these secure channels. If an employee is using a mobile phone, he or she might forget to use the VPN and employ an unsecured wireless network instead, exposing corporate systems and data to risk.
During the pandemic, threat actors realized that insecure home networks and a lack of security controls typically found on corporate networks could work to their benefit. The World Economic Forum estimates cyber attacks jumped 238% globally between February and April 2020.
Technical Requirements
Secure Infrastructures
Flexible work environments require access to on-premises systems and data, and therefore most enterprises rely on employees using a VPN. However, organizations can’t trust that workers will always use these secure channels. If an employee is using a mobile phone, he or she might forget to use the VPN and employ an unsecured wireless network instead, exposing corporate systems and data to risk.
During the pandemic, threat actors realized that insecure home networks and a lack of security controls typically found on corporate networks could work to their benefit. The World Economic Forum estimates cyber attacks jumped 238% globally between February and April 2020.
NEW ROLE OF THE CISO
Over 80% of security professionals believe social media, mobile messaging, or collaboration apps present medium to high risks to their organization.
SafeGuardCyber Survey April, 2019
Secure Infrastructures
Flexible work environments require access to on-premises systems and data, and therefore most enterprises rely on employees using a VPN. However, organizations can’t trust that workers will always use these secure channels. If an employee is using a mobile phone, he or she might forget to use the VPN and employ an unsecured wireless network instead, exposing corporate systems and data to risk.
During the pandemic, threat actors realized that insecure home networks and a lack of security controls typically found on corporate networks could work to their benefit. The World Economic Forum estimates cyber attacks jumped 238% globally between February and April 2020.
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Secure InfrastructuresFlexible work environments require access to on-premises systems and data, and therefore most enterprises rely on employees using a VPN. However, organizations can’t trust that workers will always use these secure channels. If an employee is using a mobile phone, he or she might forget to use the VPN and employ an unsecured wireless network instead, exposing corporate systems and data to risk.
During the pandemic, threat actors realized that insecure home networks and a lack of security controls typically found on corporate networks could work to their benefit. The World Economic Forum estimates cyber attacks jumped 238% globally between February and April 2020.
Collaboration and Communications ApplicationsOrganizations also increasingly rely on cloud-based collaboration platforms and personal communications technologies to connect teams across regions and time zones.
With the sudden onset of the pandemic, many organizations abruptly switched to remote work and found themselves having to allow technologies like MS Teams, Slack, Zoom and Webex on a scale they were uncomfortable permitting earlier. At the time, many IT leaders believed these solutions would be temporary and they’d quickly go back to "normal."
Now, more than a year later, not only are organizations continuing to use these technologies, but they’re doubling down. Yet, they still have no way to keep these systems secure from third-party risks. For example, a recent attack against EA Games involved infiltrating the company’s Slack instance and launching a fileless social engineering scheme to gain access to the network, resulting in the theft and exfiltration of highly-valuable intellectual property.
Communications SolutionsSimilarly, IT once viewed communications solutions like WhatsApp and WeChat as personal apps. Because corporate teams had zero visibility into them, they would not allow employees to do business on them. But in some critical emerging markets, only a small percentage of people use email. Most use mobile chat applications like WhatsApp. It has become a business imperative to use the local technology.
New Security Challenges
These collaboration and communications tools present significant data governance and security challenges for large organizations. In a survey by SafeGuard Cyber:
- 78% of cybersecurity leaders express an inability to protect all communication channels and digital assets6
- 46% say collaboration tools represent the biggest security challenge
- 1 in 3 say their biggest challenge is mobile chat apps, WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram
- 1 in 5 say their biggest challenge is Video meetings (Zoom, Webex, etc. )
Hybrid work environments will only increase the challenges. As employee devices and laptops move onto the corporate network and then back home where they can be exposed to hackers and more easily infected with malware and ransomware, it will be difficult for security teams to protect employees from threats, detect and respond to insider threats, or stop malware and ransomware.
Only 20% of security professionals feel confident they are effectively mitigating the digital risks from social media, messaging and collaboration apps.
SafeGuardCyber Survey April, 2019
SafeGuardCyber Survey April, 2019
SafeGuardCyber Survey April, 2019
SafeGuardCyber Survey April, 2019
Benefits
With SafeGuard Cyber’s agentless architecture, organizations benefit from:
Faster MTTD/RGain unprecedented visibility to respond to internal and external threats in hard-to-see places like direct messages and group channels. Reduce detection and response times in the cloud infrastructure where work gets done.
Rapid Time to ValueBe up and running in hours not days. Organizations no longer have to configure agents.
Integrated DefenseConnect our agentless security platform into your existing cyber defense systems, feeding event data and telemetry into your EDR and SIEM solutions.
Next Step
SafeGuard Cyber is the most comprehensive integrated cloud communications security platform to address cybersecurity threats and compliance risks across today’s modern cloud workplace. Through a combination of unified visibility, contextual analysis, and multi-channel investigations and detections, SafeGuard Cyber mitigates risks in email, mobile and web messaging apps, collaboration apps, and social media.
Powered by Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and patented Social Engineering Detection technologies, the SafeGuard Cyber platform reduces investigation and detection hours to minutes while providing resolution of social engineering and language-based attacks in over 50 languages.
