Ayush Kumar

Author Archives: Ayush Kumar

Dispelling the Generative AI fear: how Cloudflare secures inboxes against AI-enhanced phishing

Email continues to be the largest attack vector that attackers use to try to compromise or extort organizations. Given the frequency with which email is used for business communication, phishing attacks have remained ubiquitous. As tools available to attackers have evolved, so have the ways in which attackers have targeted users while skirting security protections. The release of several artificial intelligence (AI) large language models (LLMs) has created a mad scramble to discover novel applications of generative AI capabilities and has consumed the minds of security researchers. One application of this capability is creating phishing attack content.

Phishing relies on the attacker seeming authentic. Over the years, we’ve observed that there are two distinct forms of authenticity: visual and organizational. Visually authentic attacks use logos, images, and the like to establish trust, while organizationally authentic campaigns use business dynamics and social relationships to drive their success. LLMs can be employed by attackers to make their emails seem more authentic in several ways. A common technique is for attackers to use LLMs to translate and revise emails they’ve written into messages that are more superficially convincing. More sophisticated attacks pair LLMs with personal data harvested from compromised accounts to write personalized, Continue reading

See what threats are lurking in your Office 365 with Cloudflare Email Retro Scan

See what threats are lurking in your Office 365 with Cloudflare Email Retro Scan
See what threats are lurking in your Office 365 with Cloudflare Email Retro Scan

We are now announcing the ability for Cloudflare customers to scan old messages within their Office 365 Inboxes for threats. This Retro Scan will let you look back seven days and see what threats your current email security tool has missed.

Why run a Retro Scan

Speaking with customers, we often hear that they do not know the condition of their organization’s mailboxes. Organizations have an email security tool or use Microsoft’s built-in protection but do not understand how effective their current solution is. We find that these tools often let malicious emails through their filters increasing the risk of compromise within the company.

In our pursuit to help build a better Internet, we are enabling Cloudflare customers to use Retro Scan to scan messages within their inboxes using our advanced machine learning models for free. Our Retro Scan will detect and highlight any threats we find so that customers can clean up their inboxes by addressing them within their email accounts. With this information, customers can also implement additional controls, such as using Cloudflare or their preferred solution, to prevent similar threats from reaching their mailbox in the future.

Running a Retro Scan

Customers can navigate to the Cloudflare Continue reading

Descubre qué amenazas acechan tu buzón de correo de Office 365 con Cloudflare Email Retro Scan

Ahora los clientes de Cloudflare pueden analizar viejos mensajes de sus bandejas de entrada de Office 365 en busca de amenazas. Retro Scan te permitirá observar qué amenazas ha pasado por alto tu actual herramienta de seguridad del correo electrónico en los últimos siete días.

Por qué ejecutar Retro Scan

Al hablar con los clientes, solemos escuchar que no conocen el estado de los buzones de correo de sus organizaciones. Las organizaciones tienen una herramienta de seguridad para correo electrónico o usan la protección integrada de Microsoft, pero no entienden qué nivel de efectividad tiene la actual solución. A menudo, descubrimos que estas herramientas permiten el paso de correos electrónicos maliciosos a través de sus filtros, lo que aumenta el riesgo en la empresa.

En nuestra búsqueda de ayudar a crear un mejor servicio de Internet, permitimos a los clientes de Cloudflare el uso de Retro Scan para analizar mensajes en sus buzones de entrada con nuestros modelos de aprendizaje automático avanzados, ¡gratis! Nuestro Retro Scan detecta y resalta las amenazas que encontramos para que los clientes puedan limpiar sus buzones de entrada y gestionarlas dentro de sus cuentas de correo electrónico. Con esta información, los clientes también pueden implementar Continue reading

Veja quais ameaças estão escondidas no seu Office 365 com o Cloudflare Email Retro Scan

Agora anunciamos a possibilidade de os clientes da Cloudflare verificarem mensagens antigas em suas caixas de entrada do Office 365 em busca de ameaças. Este Retro Scan permitirá que você analise sete dias atrás e veja quais ameaças sua ferramenta de segurança de e-mail atual deixou passar.

Por que executar um Retro Scan

Conversando com os clientes, ouvimos frequentemente que eles não sabem o estado das caixas de entrada de suas organizações. As organizações possuem uma ferramenta de segurança de e-mail ou usam a proteção integrada da Microsoft, mas não entendem a eficácia de sua solução atual. Descobrimos que essas ferramentas muitas vezes permitem que e-mails maliciosos passem por seus filtros, aumentando o risco de comprometimento dentro da empresa.

Em nossa busca para ajudar a construir uma internet melhor, disponibilizamos para os clientes da Cloudflare o uso do Retro Scan para verificar mensagens em suas caixas de entrada usando nossos modelos avançados de aprendizado de máquina gratuitamente. Nosso Retro Scan detecta e destaca quaisquer ameaças que encontrarmos, assim os clientes podem limpar suas caixas de entrada tratando-as em suas contas de e-mail. Com essas informações, os clientes também podem implementar controles adicionais, como usar a Cloudflare ou sua solução preferida, Continue reading

Sehen Sie, welche Bedrohungen in Ihrem Office 365 lauern – mit dem Retro Scan von Cloudflare für E-Mails

Ab sofort können Cloudflare-Kunden alte Nachrichten in ihren Office 365-Postfächern auf Bedrohungen hin scannen. Mit dem Retro Scan können Sie jeweils die vergangenen sieben Tage überprüfen, um zu sehen, welche Bedrohungen Ihrem aktuellen E-Mail-Sicherheitstool entgangen sind.

Gründe für den Einsatz eines Retro Scan

Kunden berichten uns oft, dass sie nicht wissen, in welchem Zustand die E-Mail-Postfächer ihrer Unternehmen sind. Firmen nutzen ein E-Mail-Sicherheitstool oder den bei Microsoft integrierten Schutz. Oft ist wissen sie aber nicht, wie effektiv ihre aktuelle Lösung tatsächlich arbeitet. Wir haben festgestellt, dass schädliche E-Mails von diesen Werkzeugen oft nicht herausgefiltert werden, wodurch sich das Risiko einer Kompromittierung innerhalb des Unternehmens erhöht.

Im Rahmen unserer Bemühungen, ein besseres Internet zu schaffen, stellen wir Cloudflare-Kunden nun einen Retro Scan zur Verfügung. Mit diesem können sie Nachrichten in ihren Postfächern unter Einsatz fortschrittlicher Machine Learning-Modelle kostenlos scannen. Unser Retro Scan erkennt Bedrohungen und weist auf diese hin, sodass Kunden ihre Postfächer durch eine Behebung innerhalb ihrer E-Mail-Konten bereinigen können. Mit diesen Informationen sind sie außerdem in der Lage, herkömmliche Kontrollen zu implementieren. Sie können also Cloudflare oder ihre bevorzugte Lösung einsetzen, um vergleichbare Bedrohungen in Zukunft daran zu hindern, ihre Postfach überhaupt erst zu erreichen.

Einsatz des Retro Scan

Continue reading

Découvrez les menaces qui se dissimulent dans votre boîte aux lettres Office 365 avec Cloudflare Email Retro Scan

Nous annonçons maintenant la possibilité pour les clients de Cloudflare d'analyser les anciens messages dans leurs boîtes de réception Office 365 afin de détecter les menaces. Le service Retro Scan vous permet de revenir sept jours en arrière, afin d'identifier les menaces qui n'ont pas été détectées par votre outil de sécurité actuel.

Pourquoi exécuter le service Retro Scan

Lorsque nous échangeons avec nos clients, ces derniers nous apprennent souvent qu'ils n'ont pas connaissance de l'état des boîtes aux lettres de leur entreprise. Les entreprises disposent d'un outil de sécurité des e-mails, ou elles utilisent la protection intégrée de Microsoft, mais elles ne sont pas en mesure de comprendre l'efficacité de leur solution actuelle. Nous constatons que les filtres de ces outils laissent souvent passer des e-mails malveillants, augmentant le risque de compromission de données au sein des entreprises.

Conformément à notre engagement de contribuer à bâtir un Internet meilleur, nous permettons désormais aux clients de Cloudflare d'utiliser Retro Scan pour analyser les messages dans leurs boîtes de réception à l'aide de nos modèles d'apprentissage automatique avancés – et ce, gratuitement. Notre service Retro Scan détectera et mettra en évidence toutes les menaces que nous identifions, afin de permettre aux Continue reading

Cloudflare Email Security now works with CrowdStrike Falcon LogScale

Cloudflare Email Security now works with CrowdStrike Falcon LogScale
Cloudflare Email Security now works with CrowdStrike Falcon LogScale

We are excited to announce an extended partnership between CrowdStrike and Cloudflare to bring together Cloudflare Email Security and CrowdStrike Falcon® LogScale. With this integration, joint customers who have both Falcon LogScale and Cloudflare Email Security can now send detection data to be ingested and displayed within their Falcon LogScale dashboard.

What is CrowdStrike Falcon LogScale?

CrowdStrike Falcon LogScale enables organizations to ingest, aggregate and analyze massive volumes of streaming log data from a wide array of sources at petabyte scale. It offers search and visualization capabilities, enabling users to easily query and explore their log data to gain valuable insights and identify security threats or anomalies.

Falcon LogScale helps customers by providing:

Log Ingestion It supports the collection of logs from diverse sources and can handle high volumes of log data in real time.

Real-Time Search Users can perform fast searches across their log data, enabling quick detection and investigation of security incidents or operational issues.

Dashboards and Visualizations Falcon LogScale offers customizable dashboards and visualizations to help teams gain insights from their log data.

All of these capabilities enable proactive threat hunting by leveraging advanced analytics. It helps security teams identify potential threats, detect anomalies, and quickly remediate Continue reading

Cloudflare partners with KnowBe4 to equip organizations with real-time security coaching to avoid phishing attacks

Cloudflare partners with KnowBe4 to equip organizations with real-time security coaching to avoid phishing attacks
Cloudflare partners with KnowBe4 to equip organizations with real-time security coaching to avoid phishing attacks

Today, we are very excited to announce that Cloudflare’s cloud email security solution, Area 1, now integrates with KnowBe4, a leading security awareness training and simulated phishing platform. This integration allows mutual customers to offer real-time coaching to their employees when a phishing campaign is detected by Cloudflare’s email security solution.

We are all aware that phishing attacks often use email as a vector to deliver the fraudulent message. Cybercriminals use a range of tactics, such as posing as a trustworthy organization, using urgent or threatening language, or creating a sense of urgency to entice the recipient to click on a link or download an attachment.

Despite the increasing sophistication of these attacks and the solutions to stop them, human error remains the weakest link in this chain of events. This is because humans can be easily manipulated or deceived, especially when they are distracted or rushed. For example, an employee might accidentally click on a link in an email that looks legitimate but is actually a phishing attempt, or they might enter their password into a fake login page without realizing it. According to the 2021 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, phishing was the most common form of social Continue reading

API-based email scanning

API-based email scanning
API-based email scanning

The landscape of email security is constantly changing. One aspect that remains consistent is the reliance of email as the beginning for the majority of threat campaigns. Attackers often start with a phishing campaign to gather employee credentials which, if successful, are used to exfiltrate data, siphon money, or perform other malicious activities. This threat remains ever present even as companies transition to moving their email to the cloud using providers like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.

In our pursuit to help build a better Internet and tackle online threats, Cloudflare offers email security via our Area 1 product to protect all types of email inboxes - from cloud to on premise. The Area 1 product analyzes every email an organization receives and uses our threat models to assess if the message poses risk to the customer. For messages that are deemed malicious, the Area 1 platform will even prevent the email from landing in the recipient's inbox, ensuring that there is no chance for the attempted attack to be successful.

We try to provide customers with the flexibility to deploy our solution in whatever way they find easiest. Continuing in this pursuit to make our solution as turnkey as Continue reading

How Cloudflare Area 1 and DLP work together to protect data in email

How Cloudflare Area 1 and DLP work together to protect data in email
How Cloudflare Area 1 and DLP work together to protect data in email

Threat prevention is not limited to keeping external actors out, but also keeping sensitive data in. Most organizations do not realize how much confidential information resides within their email inboxes. Employees handle vast amounts of sensitive data on a daily basis, such as intellectual property, internal documentation, PII, or payment information and often share this information internally via email making email one of the largest locations confidential information is stored within a company. It comes as no shock that organizations worry about protecting the accidental or malicious egress of sensitive data and often address these concerns by instituting strong Data Loss Prevention policies. Cloudflare makes it easy for customers to manage the data in their email inboxes with Area 1 Email Security and Cloudflare One.

Cloudflare One, our SASE platform that delivers network-as-a-service (NaaS) with Zero Trust security natively built-in, connects users to enterprise resources, and offers a wide variety of opportunities to secure corporate traffic, including the inspection of data transferred to your corporate email. Area 1 email security, as part of our composable Cloudflare One platform, delivers the most complete data protection for your inbox and offers a cohesive solution when including additional services, such as Data Loss Continue reading

How Cloudflare helps secure the inboxes of democracy

How Cloudflare helps secure the inboxes of democracy

This post is also available in 简体中文, 日本語, Français, Español.

How Cloudflare helps secure the inboxes of democracy

We at Cloudflare believe that every candidate, no matter their political affiliation, should be able to operate their campaign without having to worry about the risk of cyberattacks. Malicious attackers such as nation-state threat actors, those seeking monetary reward, or those with too much time on their hands often disagree with our mission and aim to wreak havoc on the democratic process.

Protecting Email Inboxes Is Key In Stopping Attacks

In the past years, malicious actors have used email as their primary threat vector when trying to disrupt election campaigns. A quick search online shows how active attackers still are in trying to compromise election official’s email inboxes.1 Over 90% of damages done to any organization are caused by a phishing attack, making protecting email inboxes a key focus. A well crafted phishing email paired, or an errant click could give an attacker the opportunity to see sensitive information, disseminate false information to voters, or steal campaign donations.

For the United States 2022 midterm elections, Cloudflare protected the inboxes of over 100 campaigns, election officials and public organizations supporting elections. These campaigns ranged from new officials Continue reading