FirstWave launches new whaling attack filter

​FirstWave Cloud Technology launches new email C-Level Impersonation filter to combat the rising risk of targeted ‘Whaling’ phishing attacks.

In the recent past, the incidence of incoming emails sometimes known as “whaling” or “CEO impersonation fraud emails” has increased quite noticeably, representing a greater threat to companies including private and public enterprise from sophisticated actors seeking to exploit weaknesses in company payment control and authorisation procedures to illegally gain financial advantage. Sometimes dubbed the ‘Bogus Boss’ email scam, instances of companies affected by the fraud have been reported in the media recently, one being a French firm called Etna Industrie.
 
Recognising the rising frequency  and detrimental  business impacts of this email fraud technique, FirstWave Cloud Technology has introduced a new C-Level Impersonation filter to its existing public cloud Email content security product, to further improve protection for all of its customers.
 
“The majority of current Spam and Phishing filters used in premises-based technologies and cloud -based Email security services focus on spoofing detection and sender name blacklists which are not effective in protecting businesses and enterprises from this targeted threat. The solution we have developed is designed to detect and block the various forms of ‘whaling’ attacks, specifically tailorable to protect a company’s C-Level executives, key employees and officers”, said Roger Carvosso, FirstWave Cloud Technology Portfolio and Marketing Director.
 
This new C-Level Impersonation filter feature is part of FirstWave’s own unique Enterprise Specific Protection (ESP)™ software technology and reinforces FirstWaves’ core philosophy of addressing the specific security, threat protection and analytics requirements of each organisation it serves.

The classification algorithm used by this C-Level Impersonation filter has been designed, trained and verified by the FirstWave software development team to achieve high protection effectiveness with low false positives.