Email Security Blog

Phishing Solutions Compared

I just Googled the term ‘phishing solutions,’ and lucky for me I got 9.1 million hits. Not bad right? Only sort of, there are a lot of email security solutions that are claiming to be anti-phishing solutions, but the reality is US businesses hemorrhage billions of dollars a year having invested in and deployed some of leading email security solutions.

The reality is Mimecast, Agari, FireEye are superb spam and anti-malware security solutions but, email security and phishing prevention are two very different animals, and the mainstream email security platforms are failing when it comes to the crafty email phishing schemes that are prevalent today.

In our 2018 Q4 phishing analysis, we found almost 5,000 phishing attempts that had successfully transited one of the three spam filters I referenced earlier.

In the past few months, both Facebook and Google were victims of the same multi-million dollar phishing attack, both of those firms had engaged 3rd party email security platforms and in-house tech that were supposed to be phishing protection solutions, they weren't, and millions of dollars were misappropriated before anyone realized.

He said, she said, what's the difference?

INKY was designed to be a phishing solution, and as such, our architecture and our approach to phishing prevention are entirely novel and unquestionably superior.

INKY combines three main behind the scenes components that are devastating effectively and mostly missing from the email security platforms:

Computer Vision

INKY is the phishing solution who can see in the dark, see through the muck, see in the rain, and no matter what is thrown at her, her vision is crystal clear. We are the only solution that has successfully deployed and implemented computer vision. INKY can spot minute differences in email graphics and iconography, catching things that simply don't look right but that are often so indiscernible that they easily bypass the email security platforms, and worse make it into the email users inbox providing a false sense of security.

Computer vision is vital in the identification and assessment of phishing attacks. The attacks of today are often brand forgeries. For a phishing solution to be viable, the platform must be able to recognize the graphical constructs of a legitimate corporate email vs. a deliberate forgery.

At INKY we've seen call's to action from Microsoft, USPS, Target, FedEx to name a few, all fake, but all carefully constructed to the point it would be virtually impossible for the human eye to detect. INKY is the only platform that can make the distinction between graphical forgeries.

Machine Learning

Many of the purported phishing solutions rely on updating their technology by following the trends of the phishing aggregators. In other words, their filters are often hours or days behind, their anti-phishing algorithms are great at catching yesterday's news but largely ineffective when faced with a zero-day attack or cleverly constructed spear phishing or VIP impression emails. 

Again, INKY has a very distinct difference. Our platform does not rely on the phishing aggregators; we don't look backward. INKY is in a perpetual state of learning, with every new phishing attack, INKY learns a little more, the moment a new attack is detected and prevented the entire INKY community is immediately insulated. Phishing solutions must be able to learn; otherwise, they are mostly static, they close the barn door only after the horses have left, and sure, future horses might be protected, but all it takes is one successful phishing attack to drive a stampede of dollars out of your business.

Our platform is in a constant state of evolution, in that respect we are peerless, INKY is a smarter phishing solution today than she was yesterday, and very likely brighter now than what she was when you started reading this blog. INKY does not require manual intervention like the other phishing solutions; INKY is educated and ready to protect.

Artificial Intelligence

To tie our Computer Vision and Machine Learning algorithms together intelligently, we have deployed our groundbreaking Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine. Our AI enabled phishing solution can make smart, informed choices as it analyzes incoming email traffic, with the ability to 'see' and the ability to 'learn' our AI is an incredibly powerful tool in the war against phishing. None of the mainstream spam or malware filters have anything close to this capability, relying on human intervention to set and update their filtering rules.

INKY thinks, see's and learns with one goal in mind to be the complete phishing solution, always looking forward never looking back, INKY remains peerless.

User Experience

Having given you a behind the scenes look at how INKY operates, you already have a good grasp of what it takes to be a real anti-phishing software platform. However, what the email user experiences is also an important part of our phishing solutions.

INKY provides email users with color-coded, detailed banners, integrated into every message. The banner presentation is platform agnostic, bringing a unified and unique user experience across desktop and mobile platforms. The banners provide the email users with an online training and alert system, providing them with unique and in-depth knowledge of the messages they receive, and conditioning them to understand the subtleties between problematic emails and those that are legitimate. Our messaging is direct, yet succinct and always clearly focused on the specific message at hand.

Wrap it up Chuck

In the end, there are lots of great spam and malware filters out there; INKY can partner with any of them, or be your single source for phishing, spam, and malware prevention. The reality is that many of our would-be peers will catch some of the phish, but far too many are missed, you can see the net effect daily as the cost of successful phishing attacks grows more extensive in both human and financial terms.

INKY can be installed in less than an hour, but if you still aren't convinced take the INKY Phishing Phitness test and let us prove it to you.

INKY – Phight Phish