Announcing New and Enhanced SonicWall Email Security 9.0 with Capture ATP to Detect Zero-Day

/0 Comments/in /by

Ransomware attacks in 2016 grew by 167x year-over-year to 638 million. As today’s malware and ransomware pose ever evolving malicious, zero-day threats, organizations need to defend their network’s beyond their perimeters. SonicWall introduces a powerful defense: the new SonicWall Email Security 9.0 integrates with our award-winning Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Service. This unique combination delivers a cloud-based, multi-engine sandbox that not only inspects email traffic for suspicious code, but also blocks ransomware, zero-day and other malicious files from entering the network until a verdict is reached. This release is available in cool new SonicWALL hardware appliances, virtual appliances and Hosted Email Security service.

In his blog our President and CEO Bill Conner, highlighting SonicWall’s 2017 Annual Threat Report, points out that email is a highly vulnerable attack vector for cyber criminals. Employees fall victim all too often to ransomware, phishing and unknown threats. The enhanced SonicWall Email 9.0 with Capture cloud-based sandboxing technology detects these advanced threats. It scans a range of email attachment types, analyzes them in a multi-engine sandbox, blocks them until reviewed by an administrator, and rapidly deploys remediation signatures. Signatures for newly discovered malware are quickly generated and automatically distributed across the SonicWall GRID Threat Network, preventing further infiltration by the malware threat. We offer organizations a choice of administrative options ranging from removing an offending email attachment to blocking an entire message. The result is higher security effectiveness and faster response times.

Innovative features of SonicWall Email Security 9.0 include:

  • Advanced Threat Protection: Integrates Capture cloud-based sandboxing technology for detection of zero-day threats such as ransomware, for fine-grained inspection of SMTP traffic
  • Next-generation Email Protection: Incorporates anti-spam, anti-virus and anti-spoofing functionalities to not only detect and prevent spam and other unwanted email, but also scan email messages and attachments for ransomware, Trojan horses, worms and other types of malicious content.
  • Improved Office 365 Support: Enhances security for multi-tenant environments by providing a method for ensured, mapped delivery of emails for SonicWall Hosted Email Security environments
  • Updated Line of Appliances: Refreshes SonicWall’s line of Email Security hardware appliances, helping customers to better face threats delivered by email.
  • Encryption Protection: Supports not only SMTP Authentication, but also the encryption service feature enables any email containing protected data to be automatically encrypted, routed for approval or archived.
  • Policy and Compliance Management: Enables an administrator to enact policies that filter messages and their contents as they enter or exit the organization. This allows organizations to meet regulatory requirements based on government legislation, industry standards or corporate governance activities.

“As a loyal SonicWall channel partner, we at Napa Valley Networks were thrilled to see SonicWall resume operations as a standalone cybersecurity company and go back to its roots of driving a deeper focus on technological innovation,” said Julie Neely, founding partner of Napa Valley Networks. “SonicWall Email Security 9.0 with Capture Advanced Threat Protection Service is a clear demonstration of the company’s continued commitment to better serving its channel partners.”

“With the continued onslaught of ransomware, malware and other cyber-attacks, our customers are looking to us to provide them with solutions that allow them to spend more time conducting day-to-day business while staying abreast of the threat landscape. SonicWall allows our engineers, and most importantly our customers, to sleep at night! At Sterling Computers, our mission is to help government and education customers get the most out of their tech infrastructure,” said Steve Van Ginkel, Sterling Computers’ vice president of Business Development & Partner Alliances.

“KHIPU Networks Limited have been using the SonicWALL Email Security software/appliance for over 10 years,” said Andrew Brimson, Managing Director, KHIPU Networks Ltd. “Email Security has been instrumental in protecting our business interests from threats and attacks as well as protection against data leakage. We have found the SonicWALL Email Security software easy to configure, good for reporting and tailorable to our changing requirements.”

Learn more and download the SonicWall Email Security 9.0 data sheet and see all of the enhancements.

View Datasheet

SonicWall Email Security 8.3 Delivers New Spam Detection and Authentication

/0 Comments/in /by

Summertime means different things to different people. Whether it be kids enjoying time off from school, or parents taking long family vacations, summertime gives everyone an opportunity to re-energize and re-focus.

Everyone that is, including hackers.

Threats to your infrastructure don’t take a vacation, and if you’re entrusted with securing your organization email, it’s important to not leave your guard down during these warm summer days.

SonicWall Email Security solutions continuously protects your email infrastructure from ever-increasing threats including spam, phishing attacks, and malware. And, now you can rest even further knowing that the protection provided by SonicWall Email Security has been improved once again. Our latest release, Email Security 8.3, delivers more effective protection against emerging threats, through the following key features:

  • New Spam-Detection Engine – utilizes both a retrained Adversarial Bayesian model, as well as a new machine learning model which leverages a Support Vector Machine approach
  • SMTP Authentication – if you’re concerned about preventing unauthorized users on your infrastructure, new SMTP authentication requires a user to authenticate prior to sending outbound emails

Additionally, SonicWall Email Security solutions continue leveraging a robust architecture to deliver superior protection with the following features:

  • Multi-Layer Protection – proven, patented, email scanning technologies deliver superior real-time protection
  • Automated Management and Reporting ““ minimize required administration time
  • Compliance & Encryption Management – protect against confidential data leaks and compliance violations
  • Flexible Deployment Options – to best meet business infrastructure requirements, including on-Premise, Virtual, and Cloud-based
  • Scalable – ability to configure for growth and redundancy, allows your infrastructure to grow as required without requiring large upfront costs
  • Multi-Tenancy – enables MSPs to provision and manage email security services for multiple customers

SonicWall System Architecture

Graphic of SonicWall's System Architecture of Email Security 8.3

SonicWall Email Security provides the comprehensive protection needed, so maybe you too can enjoy your summer!

SonicWall Email Security 8.3 is available today for download for those with a valid license. For more information please contact your preferred reseller, reach us directly at 888.557.6642 or sales@sonicwall.com, or visit us for product detail here.

Learn More

New SonicWall Email Security 8.2 w. Cyren AV

/0 Comments/in /by

The foundation of email threat protection has long been anti-virus technology and IP reputation databases. Threat research teams across the globe are hard at work analyzing email, identifying spam and malware, and building anti-virus and IP reputation database libraries to help combat threats. Experts agree that for best threat protection, email security solutions should not rely on a single anti-virus engine or reputation database, but should integrate multiple sources to maximize security effectiveness.

To deliver best-in-class email threat protection, SonicWall Email Security 8.2 includes multiple anti-virus technologies, including SonicWall Global Response Intelligent Defense (GRID) Anti-Virus, SonicWall Time Zero, and premium anti-virus technologies, including McAfee, Kaspersky, and now, Cyren Anti-Virus.

Cyren AV is now included with SonicWall Hosted Email Security and, for customers that prefer an on-prem solution, available with Email Security appliance and software release 8.2, when purchased with the Total Secure subscription service. The SonicWall Email Security offers seamless set-up for IT administrators and provides immediate results.

“Since replacing our Barracuda appliance with SonicWall, we achieved a 95 percent reduction in spam reaching user mailboxes,” saidGary Walker, network administrator, City of Alexandria.

With SonicWall Email Security solutions, our GRID Network performs rigorous testing and evaluation of millions of emails every day, and then reapplies this constantly updated analysis to provide exceptional spam-blocking results and anti-virus and anti-spyware protection.  SonicWall Time Zero Virus Protection uses predictive and responsive technologies to protect organizations from virus infections before anti-virus signature updates are available. Suspect emails are identified and immediately quarantined, safeguarding the network from the time a virus outbreak occurs until the time an anti-virus signature update is available. Moreover, premium anti-virus technology from industry-leading, anti-virus partners including McAfee, Kaspersky, and Cyren provides an additional layer of anti-virus protection, resulting in protection superior to that provided by solutions that rely on a single anti-virus technology. In addition to the multi-layer threat protection and ease of use, the SonicWall solution is affordable and provides low TCO.

“With SonicWall, we have easily saved $30,000, and will save an additional $15,000 each year,” said Walker.

Learn More about SonicWall Email Security

For more information about SonicWall Email Security, please visit our website, refer to the SonicWall Email Security 8.2 release notesor contact a SonicWall representative at 1.888.557.6642, or emailsales@sonicwall.com

LEARN MORE

Now Available: New SonicWall Email Security eLearning Course

/0 Comments/in /by

SonicWall SES eLearning course has had a makeover! And how! With recent upgrades to the SonicWall SES product suite, it was only natural that the free, Web-based online training that SonicWall offers to various partner channels would also be revised.

Change needs to beget Changed Content!

The newly launched course contains up-to-date information on SonicWall ‘s SES product suite, challenging quizzes, engaging instructional strategies modeled with a constructivist approach, a new course template, colorful and animated screens and smaller course segments to accommodate busy schedules! The course harmonizes various knowledge levels and seeks to provide an enhanced learning experience around the SonicWall SES solution, to supplement the information provided by the product Admin Guide.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also!

This free, self-paced training instructs you on how to deploy, configure, and maintain the SonicWall Email Security (SES) solution to meet email security and compliance requirements. The Web-based course prepares the students for their CSSA Level Certification exam. All 11 modules of this course are interspersed with challenging quizzes and knowledge checks modeled along Kirkpatrick’s evaluation principles and procedures to integrate learning, behavior, and results.

These knowledge checks have been deliberately left ungraded because their primary purpose is to help you revisit, analyze, or explore a concept based on any prior knowledge or experience in the email security domain. Detailed and analytical feedback is provided to you for most of the quizzes.

The new SonicWall SES course includes behaviorist-oriented, pre-instructional strategies, such as stimulating recall of prerequisites. It also follows a constructivist approach to non-graded quizzes and knowledge checks that provide opportunities for the learners to reflect upon and articulate what they learned using analytical or holistic rubrics.

There are things known, and there are things unknown. And in between are the doors!

The mainstay of the course is that the revised content came straight from the horse’s mouth, figuratively speaking! The subject matter expertise for the content originated not from the product engineers, but from the folks in the middle of all action, at the vanguards of the battle lines, at…, well, you get the idea! We are referring to none other than the omniscient Tech Support folks that provide solutions to any issues you might ever face with your SonicWall SES application. Their repertoire of case studies drawn from real-life customer stories and experiences was the source of much of the course content and helped make it as contextual and real-life as possible.

Knowledge is of two kinds; We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information about it.

Let’s just summarize by stating that the new SonicWall Email Security course is dynamic, right-sized, collaborative, personalized, comprehensive and ““ best of all ““ free! So check it out and send us your feedback.

REGISTER TODAY

How to Enforce Email Compliance and Encryption to Satisfy Users

/0 Comments/in /by

If you’re like the majority of internet users, you mostly access the internet from your mobile devices. And by the way, so do your customers. In fact, 2014 was the year that mobile traffic exceeded legacy PC traffic on the internet. Business success, now more than ever, requires that you provide a great, mobile user experience, Email continues to be a key communication tool for business. Although email communication has been a primary application for mobile devices for many years, secure email exchange, ensuring email is encrypted to protect sensitive data and to comply with industry and regulatory requirements, is typically optimized for a legacy PC user experience.

With the widespread use of smartphones and tablets in business today, email encryption solutions must provide a seamless user experience across all devices. Unfortunately, many legacy solutions and services were not designed to function well on these devices, leaving users frustrated or unable to access or manage encrypted messages and files on their smartphones and tablets. If your business is subject to industry compliance or regulatory compliance to protect sensitive data, or if you’re concerned about protecting company intellectual property, it’s increasingly important to deploy an email encryption service designed and optimized for use with mobile devices that provides the seamless user experience subscribers and recipients want and need.

If you’re interested in learning more about requirements for protecting sensitive data, including how to ensure the secure exchange of email containing sensitive customer data – and simplify compliance in the process.

Read this white paper for details about achieving regulatory and industry compliance when moving:

  • PII (Personally Identifiable Information)
  • PHI (Protected Health Information)
  • Proprietary data
  • Any other types of sensitive information
DOWNLOAD WHITE PAPER

You’ll get a side-by-side look at specific HIPAA/HITECH and PCI-DSS compliance regulations, and how the SonicWall Email Encryption service helps you meet each of them, and provides a great user experience for both legacy PC and mobile users.

Secure Email Data for HIPAA Compliance: Protect Your Business

/0 Comments/in /by

Protecting sensitive or confidential data is not just good business. For some, it’s legally required and subject to audit. For example, HIPAA regulations require organizations to take reasonable steps to ensure the confidentiality of all communications that contain patient or customer information. Health service providers and their business associates and contractors who touch or handle Protected Health Information (PHI) are subject to these rules.

Organizations such as physician’s offices, hospitals, health plans, self-insured employers, public health authorities, life insurers, clearinghouses, billing agencies, information systems vendors, service organizations, and universities could all be considered covered entities and/or business associates or their subcontractors. In addition, mandatory reporting is required for HIPAA violations, even when the data is lost by a third party.

This increases the need for subcontractors to implement the same level of security typically found in larger organizations. The penalties for failure to conform to HIPAA regulations go far beyond the hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. They include public humiliation, loss of reputation, brand damage, class-action lawsuits, and yes, even prison. But there are practical ways to avoid these penalties.

Here are some methods to secure your moving data:

1. Do an assessment.

If you do nothing else, at least do an assessment of where your PHI resides, how you get it and where you send it. Knowing where the data is that you need to protect, and how it travels, is the first step.

2. Add layers of security in case people make mistakes.

One of the most common causes of any kind of security breach is human error. Whether conscious, accidental, or simply due to laziness, human error can result in Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or Protected Health Information (PHI) being sent over the Internet as unencrypted text unless content filters are put in place to detect these messages and encode or reroute them safely. You need to:

  • Install smart filters that analyze both the email and its attachments
  • Correlate fields in both documents and attempt to match them to known patient databases
  • Encrypt messages before they’re sent over the Internet

3. Make sure the boundaries between systems are secure.

Communication security breaches commonly occur when data is transferred between two or more systems. It can happen whenever data is transferred between:

  • People within your organization’s firewall
  • People inside and outside your organization’s firewall
  • Your employees and your business associates (and their subcontractors)
  • Your employees and your customers/ patients
  • Two different systems

Whenever information passes between systems and people, the data needs to be secured at all times, even when in transit. You must also ensure the data that is sent to people outside your firewall is always sent in encrypted format, so that no one but its intended recipients can read it.

4. Make sure your internal communications are secure.

Employees who work from home present HIPAA boundary issues. It is critical that they securely transfer data from work to their home computers. Even though your business information will remain within your company it must still pass across the Internet securely. To prevent a mistake that compromises protected information, provide email encryption to any employee with access to PHI.

5. Make sure your business associate and subcontractor communications are secure.

Another boundary issue arises when employees interact with external business associates and subcontractors. It’s likely that they must regularly transfer sensitive information with these external contacts. And they may use different email systems than those in your office. Often, client or patient PII and/or PHI needs to be sent via email. Be sure to secure these emails with encryption that works with many different systems and devices, including mobile devices i.e., smartphones and tablets. Healthcare related institutions must use solutions that make it possible to communicate with anyone, anytime, anywhere, no matter what email system or device the other party uses. Likewise, you must demand the ability to securely transfer large files with all these same people.

6. Make sure your communications with telecommuters are secure.

Employees who telecommute comprise another set of boundary issues.

More medical professionals are working from home and often need to transfer large, important and time-sensitive files such as x-rays or mammograms as attachments through your email system. Because the files can be so large, they have the potential to bring your email system to a standstill.

Not only do you need to exchange these files securely, you need to send them in a way that does not overload or crash your email system. So you either must find the time, the budget, and the resources to set up file transfer sites for these large files or you can use encrypted email with a secure large file attachment capability. Either way, you must make absolutely sure that they comply with encryption guidelines.

7. Make sure when your patients communicate with you, everything they do is secure.

Your patients must often submit forms, ask questions of specific people and departments, or submit follow -up information about an ongoing illness or other matter. These communications often contain PHI. Until recently, these needs were served by paper-based processes, but now can be handled through secure electronic forms on your website. But how do you ensure that this data reaches the right department or employee to process it? And can this data be integrated into existing knowledge worker software to track its status? If the request contains sensitive information, is it received from the patient in a secure manner, or did the method of collecting data cause a privacy violation? And if any follow up is needed with the patient, can this be sent securely? With a messaging system in place that provides secure inbound and outbound service, uses email encryption and secure electronic forms, and provides workflow integration, you can streamline your operations and cost-effectively serve patients.

8. Make it easy to transfer even very large files securely.

FTP, or file transfer protocol, is the standard way to transfer files across the Internet. However, it transmits user login credentials and the contents of files in an unencrypted manner. So this is not the secure method needed for transferring. You need a secure messaging system that automatically routes large files, alerts the recipient that they are available, and that tells you when they’ve been opened and by whom.

9. Make sure you can demonstrate that your system is secure.

After an email message is sent, how do you know what happened to it? Did its intended recipient open it? Were its attachments opened? Is there proof that the message was received and was read? Should a question arise about who viewed a message or its attachments, can you prove who read them to an auditor? It’s increasingly obvious that a secure messaging system must be trackable and auditable. To make this possible, messages and their attachments, their metadata and the fingerprinting data must be both viewable and traceable. The fingerprint data must record permanently the IP addresses of the recipient’s computers, and the system’s time must be synchronized with an atomic clock so that message times are never a point of dispute. Such a system would allow your administrators and, if necessary, auditors to easily review and sort through volumes of message information, and quickly retrieve a particular message, as well as all the tracking and fingerprint information associated with it.

If you’re interested in learning more about requirements for protecting sensitive data, including how to ensure the secure exchange of email containing sensitive customer data and simplify compliance in the process.

Read this white paper for details about achieving regulatory and industry compliance when moving:

  • PII
  • PHI
  • Proprietary data
  • Any other types of sensitive information

You’ll get a side-by-side look at specific HIPAA/HITECH and PCI-DSS compliance regulations, and how the  SonicWall Email Encryption service helps you meet each of them.

DOWNLOAD WHITE PAPER

Tackle Your Compliance Demands with SonicWall’s New Hosted Email Encryption

/0 Comments/in /by

Email security is critical to protect your email from threats including spam, phishing attacks and malware. What’s more, government regulations now hold businesses and organizations accountable for protecting confidential data, ensuring it is not leaked and ensuring the secure exchange of email containing sensitive customer data or confidential information.

Contech Engineering Frees up IT Resources with SonicWall Hosted Email Security

Contech Engineered Solutions needed a better way to control spam and viruses, which IT spent too much time managing. The company deployed a hosted SonicWall email security solution and now saves 10 hours per month due to reduced support call volume, freeing up IT to handle more proactive tasks.

“Maintaining SonicWall Hosted Email Security has been a dream. It basically runs itself and allows our employees lots of flexibility to determine their own level of spam filtering,”said Matt Alvord, Senior Systems Engineer, Contech Engineered Solutions.

Contech now has the ability to respond faster to customers, because the SonicWall solution blocks spam and viruses in the cloud, so only legitimate email can be delivered to the company’s email infrastructure. As a result, network bandwidth is preserved. And, Contech receives strong, unified support from a single vendor because it has multiple SonicWall products, including the email security solution, network monitoring tools and laptops.

Mobile-Ready Secure Email Exchange

If your email security needs are evolving to include protection of confidential information to meet email compliance demands, consider SonicWall for a powerful solution that provides advanced compliance scanning and management as well as email encryption for mobile-ready secure email exchange.

The SonicWall Hosted Email Security service offers superior cloud-based protection from inbound and outbound email threats at an affordable, predictable and flexible monthly or annual subscription price. Available now, the service adds:

  • Compliance scanning and management to prevent confidential data leaks and regulatory violations.
  • An optional, integrated email encryption service that ensures secure exchange of confidential information.

Reduce Phishing Attacks with DMARC Advanced Email Authentication

In addition to new features to protect from compliance violations, the Hosted Email Security service also adds advanced email authentication technology and reporting. Now available, the service supports SPF, DKIM and DMARC technologies that help identify spoofed mail, reduce spam and phishing attacks, DMARC also enables reporting on sources and senders of email. This empowers you to identify and shut down unauthorized senders falsifying your email address to protect your brand. And for faster, more efficient administration, the service now includes a customizable, drag and drop dashboard and reports.

Learn More about SonicWall Hosted Email Security and Encryption Services

The new Hosted Email Security features and optional Email Encryption service are now available to our subscribers.

For more information about SonicWall Hosted Email Security and our new Email Encryption service, please visit our website or contact a SonicWall representative at 1.888.557.6642, or email sales@sonicwall.com.

Five Tips for Protecting Your Email

/0 Comments/in /by

Organizations are wary of the impact to their business due to spam, phishing and virus emails that enter their organization. I spend a considerable amount of my time with customers and partners discussing ways to protect their networks, users, and data from inbound threats. But it is equally important to understand the implications of not having outbound protection. Broadly, the issues around outbound email can impact the reputation of your email infrastructure which may result in your mail servers being blacklisted, leaving your resources scrambling to repair the problem and your reputation. In addition, a lack of attention to outbound protection can result in compliance violations due to leakage of sensitive information. Below, you can see that the majority of the organization’s email is inbound, but outbound is also measurable and when you remove inbound spam and junk, outbound becomes even more significant.

Graphic of inbound versus outbound email

Typical daily volume of Inbound vs. outbound email

To protect your email, here are 5 important tips:

1) Improve the trustworthiness of your email

Utilizing certain techniques, you will be able to prevent your email domains from being spoofed and from hackers sending fake/phishing emails. As a first step, set up a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record for your domain. This allows you to identify which mail servers are allowed to send email on behalf of your domain thus prevent spammers from forging it. As a second step, set up Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), which provides a method for validating a domain. Implementing DKIM involves signing each outbound email with a private key and setting up the corresponding public key in your Domain Name Server (DNS). Finally, implement Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) and configure policies to improve the trustworthiness of legit email and make better judgment on illegit ones.

2) Monitor who is spoofing your domain

Staying on the topic of DMARC, there is a second benefit to its implementation that involves a feedback loop from receiving servers. Typically senders remain largely unaware of whether or not their email domain is being spoofed. DMARC provides a way for the email receiver to report back to the sender about messages that pass and/or fail DMARC evaluation. This can be done by updating the DNS record and adding an attribute “rua=mailto:postmstr@domain.com”. You need to ensure you have an email security solution like SonicWall Email Security that supports DMARC and can process this information to create actionable reports.

3) Implement encryption

Organizations must protect their intellectual property and sensitive information from inappropriate distribution while ensuring compliance. If your organization is in a regulated industry like healthcare, banking, insurance etc., and/or you are doing business with such entities, you might want to consider encrypting your email. You should review your internal corporate and government regulatory needs and setup policy filters accordingly. For example, some companies chose to block EXE or MP3 files from delivery; or require that attachments containing company confidential information be re-routed to an approval box; or encrypt email containing Personal Health Information (PHI) when communicating with customers and partners.

4) Add multi-layered anti-virus protection.

My colleague John Gordineer wrote a blog where he emphasized the need for a layered security approach for better protection. Should one of your employee machines get infected and become a zombie system that originates spam, phishing or virus-laden email, you could see your email server blacklisted and your ISP connection shut down. Having multiple anti-virus engines scanning outbound email is a very critical part of the overall multi-layered security strategy organizations need to adopt.

5) Monitor and control the volume of outbound email

Not every flurry of outbound mail is due to a zombie infection. There are times when an internal resource (either a person or a system) can send thousands of emails without proper authorization that can result in your domain being blacklisted. To avoid such scenarios, you can enforce controls on the amount of email that any individual account can send within a specific period of time. Make sure your organization has an email security solution that can automatically block such emails and block the sender from sending more emails until appropriate corrective action can be taken.

Organizations have a responsibility to implement the right inbound and outbound controls to protect their employees, customers and partners email ecosystems. To learn more about protecting your network from email-borne attacks and other exploits, read the new SonicWall Security eBook, “Types of Cyber-Attacks and How to Prevent Them”.

Download eBook