In right this moment’s dynamic menace panorama, securing the digital entrance strains is paramount. At Cisco, with greater than 326 million emails incoming every quarter, we confronted the identical problem many organizations do: the best way to defend towards refined electronic mail threats whereas sustaining person productiveness. Our reply was a daring, layered safety strategy, powered by AI-driven options like E mail Risk Protection and the superior analytics of Splunk. Right here’s how we did it, and what we discovered.
The rising menace panorama
E mail: It’s the one main assault vector for safety breaches for companies throughout the globe. In 2023, the FBI reported $2.9 billion of enterprise losses attributed to electronic mail cyberattacks within the US, an alarming improve of over 805% since 2016. Since 2022, electronic mail ransomware incidents are up 18%. These looming threats develop daily and underscore the important want for a sturdy, multi-layered electronic mail safety technique.
Whereas native electronic mail filters present a baseline stage of safety, they’re inadequate in right this moment’s complicated menace atmosphere. In Cisco IT, we acknowledged this hole and commenced constructing a plan to boost our defenses.
Nonetheless, as we have been crafting a plan, a brand new drawback rose in precedence. Our executives have been pissed off with inboxes stuffed with spam, advertising and marketing, and litter. A fast session with Cisco Talos confirmed our plan, and we got down to improve our front-line electronic mail defenses — and shortly.
Placing our plan into motion
We leverage many options throughout Cisco’s safety portfolio to maintain us digitally resilient. However we knew that bringing the items along with the AI-driven capabilities of Cisco E mail Risk Protection and Splunk would give us an unparalleled benefit: deeply built-in, layered defenses that cut back gaps, improve safety of customers and gadgets, and safe entry to functions. Over the previous decade, we now have applied a layered strategy to guard our customers on any machine, anyplace they join, leveraging:
- Cisco XDR, which acts as a bridge between our safety functions. It unifies our safety insights and correlates information throughout a number of domains.
- Cisco Safe Malware Analytics, which determines if incoming recordsdata include malware by isolating and opening them on a digital machine, then analyzing system impacts. This powers extra knowledgeable menace detection.
- Cisco Safe Endpoint, which protects our endpoints by figuring out and blocking recordsdata containing malware, together with details about who might have opened and/or shared these recordsdata.
- Cisco Safe Endpoint Analytics, which gives endpoint machine visibility, discovering endpoint threats earlier than they’re an issue together with day-zero malware, harmful person habits, information exfiltration, and many others. It sees what functions or Software program as a Service (SaaS) are in use, makes use of forensics for incident response, and features visibility to machine varieties and working programs on the community.
- Cisco Umbrella, which provides information and insights about particular domains, enabling us to dam these with poor reputations.
- Cisco Endpoint Safety Analytics Constructed on Splunk (CESA) with Cisco AnyConnect Community Visibility Module (NVM), which feeds us wealthy person habits information for electronic mail menace investigations. The NVM is the one expertise for cell gadgets that creates IPFIX information (IP Stream Info Export). It plugs into CESA, which delivers the entire required Splunk analytics software program essential to research NVM telemetry.
And in Might 2024, going through more and more complicated threats, we deployed Cisco Safe E mail Risk Protection to mitigate threats in actual time. This platform enlists 90+ AI language fashions (LLM) detectors to routinely detect electronic mail menaces, then it proactively takes the essential subsequent steps to guard the enterprise. This innovation saves us 1000’s of hours of manually sorting, learning, and gauging intent of emails, with plenty of room for human error. As dangerous actors more and more utilize AI, E mail Risk Protection ranges the taking part in subject for us.
The E mail Risk Protection affect report affords full visibility into AI-tracked threats, exhibiting tendencies over time in addition to additional insights and analytics.
For Cisco IT, integrating E mail Risk Protection was seamless, taking solely a matter of days.In truth, since deployment day, we’ve acquired zero complaints from the enterprise and 0 unfavourable affect on our workers’ expertise. With E mail Risk Protection on prime of our present layers of electronic mail safety, worker mailboxes now not should cope with enterprise electronic mail compromise (BEC) the place dangerous actors impersonate trusted sources to steal cash from companies, phishing, or different threats. From malware to advertising and marketing spam, we are able to shortly establish and remediate all types of undesirable mail, and do with it as we see match organizationally, whether or not it’s transferring it to the junk folder or blocking it altogether.
Elevating incident response with Splunk’s superior analytics
Even with our entrance strains being well-protected by our strong layered defenses, our groups wanted extra to remain forward of dangerous actors. In April 2025, our incident response staff built-in Splunk into our operations, giving us entry to among the most revolutionary safety developments in the marketplace.
With Splunk Assault Analyzer, Cisco now permits automated menace evaluation and digital forensics for credential phishing and malware. Its proprietary expertise extracts and analyzes malicious content material hidden in textual content, photographs, macro supply code, web site content material, and extra. This automation considerably improves our staff’s operational effectivity, saving analysts’ time and enhancing the power of our staff to research complicated phishing threats with larger pace and accuracy.
Quantifiable affect: Reaching resilience at scale
For Cisco, our layered strategy is constructed to frustrate the attacker, not the person. On the subject of attackers, we’ve had loads. Throughout a typical quarter, Cisco mailboxes collectively obtain greater than 326 million inbound emails. For us, “one in 1,000,000” isn’t adequate in the case of safety. Our unified portfolio stops threats of their tracks.
Let’s break down the affect of our strategy over a typical quarter:
- 41,000,000 (12.57%) emails blocked for having poor IP reputations
- 23,000,000 (7.05%) emails blocked for DMARC failures (Area-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance)
- 6,800,000 emails blocked for spam
- 49,000 emails blocked for having poor area reputations
- 1,940 emails blocked for holding viruses
- 840 emails blocked for holding malware
- 70,000 further emails confirmed threats blocked by E mail Risk Protection’s LLM detectors
- Hundreds extra emails blocked for different numerous causes
This stage of visibility, integration, and automation is unmatched out there. Once you’re coping with various customers, workplaces, and a mixture of managed and unmanaged gadgets, there’s no various to a layered complete, platform-based strategy. Our technique successfully closes gaps within the assault floor to make our programs as well-defended as attainable.
For IT and safety groups our journey affords important classes:
- A layered protection is non-negotiable: Counting on single-point options is inadequate. A complete, built-in portfolio is important.
- AI is a pressure multiplier: AI-driven options like Cisco Safe E mail Risk Protection considerably improve menace detection and cut back guide overhead, even leveling the taking part in subject towards AI-powered assaults.
- Automation and analytics are key to effectivity: Options like Splunk Assault Analyzer automate important processes, releasing up useful safety staff assets and bettering incident response.
- Integration is paramount: The true energy comes from seamlessly connecting safety instruments, making certain information correlation and unified insights throughout your atmosphere.
Trying forward: Persevering with to construct a future-proofed office
We’re not finished constructing but. Cisco’s integration of AI, Splunk, and electronic mail safety represents a paradigm shift in how organizations can strategy safety and office innovation. By combining cutting-edge expertise with a unified imaginative and prescient for a way they will work extra successfully collectively, we’re not solely defending our entrance strains but in addition setting a brand new commonplace for resilience and adaptableness within the fashionable office. We’re bringing expertise collectively to realize issues which have by no means been attainable earlier than.
Constructing on this basis, our incident response staff is within the early phases of deploying Splunk Enterprise Safety as a part of our evolving electronic mail safety technique. Whereas this integration continues to be in progress, it displays our ongoing dedication to strengthening detection, investigation, and response capabilities throughout our surroundings. As we proceed to discover and develop sensible use instances, we anticipate that Splunk Enterprise Safety will develop into a key element in our general strategy to figuring out and mitigating email-based threats — additional future-proofing our safety posture for what’s forward.
Because the menace panorama evolves, so does Cisco. Taking these learnings, we push ahead, persevering with to innovate, combine, and strengthen our defenses to guard what issues most.
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