SlashNext Brings AI to Microsoft 365 Security
SlashNext today unfurled a SlashNext Email Detection and Response platform for Microsoft 365 that leverages artificial intelligence in the form of machine learning and computer vision algorithms coupled with natural language processing (NLP) to identify spear phishing, social engineering and business email compromise (BEC) attacks.
Patrick Harr, CEO, SlashNext, said attacks that are launched from what appear to be legitimate, trusted sites can now be analyzed at the pixel level by a SEERTM AI platform developed by SlashNext to identify targeted attacks that need to be removed from an email inbox. In the case of Microsoft 365, the SlashNext platform authenticates itself via the Microsoft Graph application programming interface (API) using the OAuth protocol.
Designed for access via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, the SlashNext Email Detection and Response platform will soon be extended to add support for other messaging platforms, eventually including text messages, said Harr.
As these attacks have become more sophisticated, most existing approaches miss up to 65% of these threats because they rely on legacy relationship graphs, URL rewriting and sandboxing email security technologies, said Harr. In contrast, the SEERTM AI platform will be able to identify 99.99% of malicious emails by applying AI technologies to messages via a virtual browser to identify cyberattacks involving spear phishing, social engineering, rogueware, bank fraud, scams and data exploit detection, he added.
Cybersecurity teams spend on average three to five minutes per email security incident removing threats, noted Harr. The AI platform also saves additional time by reducing false positive rates down to one in one million, he said. Cybersecurity teams can also respond to any threat by user, group or companywide. Pricing for the SlashNext platform starts at $2,500 annually for up to 200 user email boxes. Each additional user email box starts at $12 per annual subscription.
Given the volume of phishing attacks that are now being launched via trusted sources, it has become difficult to distinguish between legitimate emails and phishing attacks. As a result, the number of security incidents involving messages continues to sharply increase. Legacy approaches to identifying those threats are not reducing the stress of the cybersecurity teams tasked with preventing them, he said. The only way to achieve that goal is for organizations to rely more on AI to augment their cybersecurity teams, added Harr.
One way or another various forms of AI will be applied to cybersecurity. However, it takes time for AI technologies to learn an IT environment. In that sense, AI is not much different than having to train an entry-level employee. The difference is the AI platform doesn’t forget what they learned, take a day off, or leave to take a better-paying job somewhere else. SlashNext has been training its platform for several years now, so any return on investment (ROI) in the AI platform should occur within few weeks, said Harr.
Regardless of when that ROI is achieved, however, it’s clear that most cybersecurity teams can’t afford not to have a little extra AI assistance to reduce the overall number of security incidents that they need to personally investigate.
