Zero-day exploits are malware that attacks previously unknown vulnerabilities. The terms “0-day exploit” or “0-day attack” may be used interchangeably. The difference between a zero-day attack and a typical hacker attack chain is that the zero-day attack infiltrates the victim’s system, usually through a breach of email security, with a new-age exploit that steals or damages company data or causes some kind of disruptive malicious havoc, instead of just stealing passwords.
The vulnerability and the damages caused by the attack are usually not discovered until hours, days, or weeks after the targeted organization has been attacked.
Once an exploit has been discovered, it is no longer considered a zero-day threat.
Zero-Day Phishing Attacks
Cybercriminals executing a business email compromise attack stole $43 billion from organizations operating within just two cloud-based email platforms between January 2014 and October 2019.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency has warned that more than 50,000 employees have been targeted by new phishing email attacks that pose as emails from Microsoft Teams that link to bogus login pages to harvest their office 365 logins. Blocking those unknown threats becomes more complex when the embedded links redirect only after the email lands in an employee’s inbox.
Threat Landscape, Advanced Email Threats, and Zero-Day Exploits
Some of the most impactful zero-day exploits include:
Stuxnet:
The U.S. and Israel reportedly developed an exploit targeting Iranian nuclear facilities. Stuxnet was accidentally released into the wild when one of its developers connected his work laptop to the company’s internal network. Over 15 Iranian facilities, including Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, were attacked and infiltrated by Stuxnet, which caused significant damage to Iran’s nuclear program.
Aurora:
A zero-day vulnerability was exploited by Chinese threat actors in 2010 to hack into Google, Apple, and several other companies. They were trying to discover new zero-day vulnerabilities in Google’s source codes.
RSA Hack:
Cybercriminals used a zero-day vulnerability to launch a spear-phishing emails campaign targeting RSA employees in 2011. The attackers stole information regarding the company’s two-factor authentication products, including each device’s product name, version number, and serial numbers.
How Do You Identify Zero-Day Exploits?
A zero-day exploit involves analyzing suspicious emails, malicious attachments, unusual network traffic, and software behavior. It’s better to find a zero-day exploit before launching an attack. This is why a multi-layered email security system with high-level threat detection is essential to your organization.
Cybercriminal Methods and Techniques
Email attacks using popular cloud services are unlikely to be blocked for most people. Cybercriminals who successfully harvest credentials for employee email addresses can move laterally through an organization’s cloud-connected services, SharePoint, OneDrive, and others hijacking one account after the next, planting malware, stealing corporate IP, and exfiltrating customer records along the way.
The Need For Better Email Security- Ease-Of-Use- Adaptable
Most email platforms offer good support for spam, blocking inbound attachments, viruses, and malware protection. Still, they rely on scanning for threats, including malware or links that people have added to watchlists. Because of this, they lack what it would take to protect against advanced email attacks that impersonate trusted senders (from compromised email accounts) in an attempt to trick recipients.
Aligning to Four Key Strategies With Trustifi Email Security And Zero-Day Attacks
Zero-day attacks have been and will be challenging to stop now and in the future. As long as vulnerabilities exist in applications, mobile devices, and networking equipment, a hacker will find a vulnerability well before the victim can take any preventative action.
Organizations have several options to help prevent a zero-day attack by enabling the following processes:
- Enable Preventive controls proven to reduce the email phishing attack that surfaces
Enable Trustifi email in-bound shield protection for anti-spam, anti-virus, and malicious messages with malware embedded inside the transmission. - Lock down applications, systems, and messaging functions to reduce exploits and propagations.
Enable Trustifi outbound data loss prevention on all email messages - Continuous security monitoring across the enterprise, including the networks, applications, and cloud-based databases.
Enable Trustifi email scanning to monitor all inbound and outbound email messages with rogue attachments, malicious URLs, and phishing attacks. - Deploy Intrusion Detection
Enabling intrusion prevention within the email security solution helps reduce the attack surface even more. Leverage proved email security solutions like Trustifi to help block inbound phishing attack emails and detonate all attachments inside a secure sandbox.
The Trustifi Inbound Shield™
Trustifi’s Inbound Shield imposes a layer of protection between your email system and the outside world. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and dynamic engines, Inbound Shield readily identifies and blocks suspicious inbound emails. In addition to scanning and eliminating malicious content, the Inbound Shield looks for a host of anomalies, including:
- Imposters are sending messages from falsified domains.
- Requests for money transfers and confidential information.
- Links to impersonated websites.
- Attachments contain executable code snippets, SQL injection strings, etc.
These filtering processes take milliseconds to run and can even detect unprecedented zero-day attacks.
How does the Trustifi Inbound Shield™ Scanning Works?
Incoming emails are scanned with our unique and advanced approach for each page.
Email Content and Headers
- Header analysis to detect spoofing and impersonation techniques.
- Deep analysis based on content, metadata, and domain reputation.
- Proprietary method to catch zero-day phishing sites.
- Links inside files.
- Zip and archive files.
- Sandboxing.
- Trojans, viruses, and malware.
DLP and Email Encryption Solution From Trustifi
Trustifi One-Click Compliance™ and Data Loss Prevention feature ensure that the client’s data remains secure, even if the end-user forgets to encrypt an email manually. The email administrator quickly selects which compliance standards and Data Loss Prevention policies. Trustifi’s intelligent AI Engine will scan all outbound emails for sensitive content such as student records and automatically encrypt them.
With Trustifi, organizations collecting consumer information can send secure encrypted emails without remembering to click the encrypt email button. Just as quickly, recipients open an encrypted email with a single click even if they don’t have Trustifi.
The email administrator sets all the DLP and email encryption policies on the backend to prevent accidental data loss of confidential information sent externally. Other solutions require users to log in to a portal to access encrypted emails, adding complexity to sending and receiving messages.
“One-Click” Encrypt And Decrypt with Trustifi
Trustifi makes sending and opening emails simpler than ever. No log-ins, portals, or passwords are needed.
Groundbreaking Technology Supporting Optical Character Recognition Technology
Trustifi’s OCR technology uses machine learning to scan email attachments such as images and PDF files. It recognizes elements such as a credit card scan or a screenshot of a financial statement and categorizes those attachments as sensitive. The attachment files are automatically encrypted, reducing the opportunity for employees/individuals to transmit unprotected confidential material mistakenly.
Emails Get Automatically Scanned
The system automatically scans outgoing emails, applies the rules your administrator sets, and then encrypts everything in the email with no input from the user. This ensures that sensitive data and attachments are not at risk before they reach their intended recipient and are protected from the prying eyes of hackers.
Culture
Trustifi’s email security services feature a comprehensive suite of email tools for advanced threat protection, easily configurable Data Loss Prevention, and enterprise email encryption. Trustifi’s easy-to-use software is unmatched in its user-friendliness, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. Trustifi’s time to value, ease of deployment, and lower cost of ownership for SecOps make the company culture secure and a financial match for any client seeking email security, data exfiltration, and message encryption.
Why Trustifi?
Trustifi is a cyber security firm featuring solutions delivered on software as a service platform. Trustifi leads the market with the easiest to use and deploy email security products, providing both inbound and outbound email security from a single vendor.
As a global cybersecurity provider of both inbound and outbound email protection, Trustifi currently supports customers from countries including the USA, Canada, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, the UK, the Netherlands, India, the UAE, China, and Japan, Cyprus, the Philippines, and more. The company has also developed “One-Click Compliance” capabilities that cater to world security regulations, including PDPO for Hong Kong, POPI for South Africa, GDPR for Europe, and LGPD for Brazil.
Request A Demo: Trustifi – Email Security Solutions
Whether you’re looking for an extra layer of protection in your existing email environment or a complete suite solution, the expertise and simplicity Trustifi offers will exceed your expectations. Let’s discuss a customized email security plan that fits your needs perfectly.
