Cisco beefs up endpoint protection with enhanced email security suite

Enterprise IT solutions and networking giant Cisco has released advanced features to its email security suite, which would improve endpoint protection by preventing phishing and spoofing attacks.

The company, which already had a cloud-managed endpoint security solution, Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) for endpoints, has added new enhancements to this suite meant for enterprise staff.

The new capabilities offer sophisticated detection and protection mechanisms to stop threats such as ransomware and crypto-mining. A new cloud application, Cisco Visibility, has also been built into the endpoint console.

Cisco said that employees continue to be the target of hackers, who use highly crafted fraudulent emails to sneak into the organisational network. “The new capabilities will protect employees’ devices from ransomware, crypto-mining, and file-less malware.” 

“Cisco understands that protecting employees and their endpoints requires more than just antivirus. Attackers leverage the internet, email, and the network as vectors for breaching the endpoint,” said Jeff Reed, senior vice-president of product, Cisco’s Security Business Group.

“We deliver greater employee protection using cloud-delivered defence against threats hosted on the internet. Cisco is also now one of the few organisations paving the way towards eliminating email identity deception.” 

Under the advanced detection and protection mechanisms, the company has added features to shield the device even when the user is offline. The company said that its threat researchers analysed ransomware variants to identify the common techniques used for encryption and then came out with a new engine that continuously protects against ransomware encryption and propagation to keep businesses safe from ransomware.

In order to stop file-less malware, the company has added another layer of protection to the AMP to guard against unpatched software vulnerabilities round the clock.

With Cisco Visibility, the company wants to help security analysts investigate issues with confidence, quickly and at scale.  “It ingests, normalises, and enriches security events and provides a visual representation of the extent of a compromise spanning from endpoints to network to cloud,” the company said.

It has also partnered with Agari to market and sell its enhanced services in email security product, which includes Cisco domain and advanced phishing protection.