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Why This Biotech Research Firm Replaced Proofpoint to Protect Microsoft Office 365
Technology Category
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Cloud Security
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Database Security
- Cybersecurity & Privacy - Endpoint Security
Applicable Industries
- Healthcare & Hospitals
- Life Sciences
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Cybersecurity
Services
- Cybersecurity Services
- Data Science Services
The Challenge
CRO, a global contract research organization, was a highly-targeted organization for phishing attacks and intellectual espionage. It was subject to multiple regulatory laws including HIPAA and data leakage was a fundamental concern to its clients. The company had already deployed a secure email gateway from Proofpoint to protect its Office 365 environment, but it was not up to the task. Multiple times a week, the IT department had to manually send email warnings, instructing employees not to click on the malicious links that had recently reached their inbox. The constant need to monitor and react to missed attacks was both time-intensive and a high-profile reminder to everyone that IT had not yet solved the phishing problem. The old way of doing things wasn't working.
About The Customer
CRO is a market-leading, midsized, global contract research organization with a significant footprint across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Focused on vaccine, oncology, dermatology, nutrition and women?s health, CRO provides clinical research services to pharmaceutical companies, biotechs, CROs, and academic institutions. As a clinical research organization, CRO must protect both the medical information of its patients and the intellectual property of its clients. As a high-profile, international organization, it is also the target of both financial and espionage attacks.
The Solution
Mark Hernandez, the Director of Information Technology at CRO, decided to try Avanan?s unique approach to email security. On the first day of the trial, Avanan caught another whale-phishing attack, again targeted at the CEO. It had bypassed both Proofpoint and Microsoft filters but this time, it was caught before it reached his inbox. For the next month, Avanan continued to catch attacks that were able to get through Proofpoint. Now that the phishing storm is over, Hernandez has begun to take advantage of additional Avanan capabilities to prevent data leaks. Subject to both government and industry regulations, CRO must also comply with client-imposed controls on confidential data. Protecting files within both their SharePoint and OneDrive directories, the Avanan system offers a much more powerful data classification tools than available from Microsoft.
Operational Impact
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