The pandemic has disrupted business operations and technology initiatives around the world. The most obvious change has been the rapid adoption of SaaS solutions and collaborative tools that were already built for remote workers and off-site IT support. Office 365 and Microsoft Teams adoption has grown quickly as companies adjusted to public health mandates. According to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.”
Alongside this SaaS adoption, the sophistication of email attacks like spear phishing and ransomware is growing. COVID-19 has given criminals a topic of public interest that they can use to make their attacks seem like legitimate and urgent email messages. Barracuda VP of Product Mike Flouton recently spoke with Richard Stiennon about the new pandemic-driven threat landscape. Richard is the founder and chief analyst at IT-Harvest, an industry analyst firm that provides insights on trends in technology, threats, and policy.
The full video can be found here and covers topics including:
- The COVID-19 effect on cybersecurity, remote access, and corporate workers
- The short- and long-term impact on cloud migration projects
- How cybercriminals use the headlines to create their attacks
- Impersonation-based attacks and how to defend against them
- Office 365 and the benefits of cloud-based email and other SaaS technologies
- Public cloud metrics and platform security
- The future of communication
- How cloud-to-cloud backup can change the way you protect your data
- Why user education is so important to cybersecurity
How Barracuda can help
Mike also talks about how Barracuda solutions defend Office 365 environments from these attacks. This includes a look at Barracuda Sentinel, our AI-based protection from phishing and account takeover that integrates directly with Office 365 to learn communication patterns and alert the system administrator when there are anomalies. Barracuda PhishLine and Barracuda Cloud-to-Cloud Backup are also discussed.
For more from Barracuda on email security and Office 365 protection, see the following resources:
- 13 email threat types to know about right now – an in-depth look at today’s wide range of evolving email threats
- Barracuda Email Threat Scanner – a free tool to scan your Office 365 environment for existing threats
- Barracuda Total Email Protection – our complete email protection portfolio in a single bundle
- Spear Phishing: Top Threats and Trends, Vol. 4 – our most recent report on the latest spear-phishing attacks
Connect with Mike Flouton and Richard Stiennon.
Christine Barry is Senior Chief Blogger and Social Media Manager at Barracuda. In this role, she helps bring Barracuda stories to life and facilitate communication between the public and Barracuda internal teams. Prior to joining Barracuda, Christine was a field engineer and project manager for K12 and SMB clients for over 15 years. She holds several technology credentials, a Bachelor of Arts, and a Master of Business Administration. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan.
Connect with Christine on LinkedIn here.
