LAS VEGAS & BALTIMORE, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BLACK HAT 2016 – ZeroFOX, the innovator of social media security, today announced the formalization of the industry’s first security research team dedicated to exposing social media threats, driving innovative defensive technology and codifying social media security best practices. In complement to ZeroFOX’s longstanding R&D efforts, the newly dedicated ZeroFOX Research team will apply advanced security expertise, data science and machine learning to the dynamic social media threat vector. Its charter is to identify associated cybersecurity trends, explore attacker tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), and help drive technology innovations and best practices to remediate threats. The formalization of this team comes on the heels of the largest increase in social media attacks since 2013. Network compromise via social media outpaces all other web based attacks, beating email by a factor of 10x. Customer and brand fraud on social are being launched 75 percent faster than can be remediated, and CXO accounts are among the most targeted.
In conjunction with this announcement, ZeroFOX has named Mike Raggo as chief research officer. Raggo brings more than 20 years of security research experience to the role to join the existing team of security researchers, data scientists and industry veterans. As former director of security research at MobileIron, Raggo authored numerous books including “Data Hiding: Exposing Concealed Data in Multimedia, Operating Systems, Mobile Devices and Network Protocols” and “Mobile Data Loss: Threats & Countermeasures” for Syngress Books, and was a contributing author for “Information Security the Complete Reference 2nd Edition.” Additionally, he is a former security trainer, red teamer and a participating member of the PCI Mobile Task Force and FSISAC/BITS, as well as a frequent presenter at security conferences, including Black Hat, DEF CON, Gartner, RSA, DoD Cyber Crime, InfoSec, OWASP and SAN.
Making their debut at Black Hat USA 2016, ZeroFOX Research will present the world’s first end-to-end social media penetration testing and educational tool. The tool utilizes machine learning to create automated, personalized spear phishing attacks. In a presentation titled, “Weaponizing Data Science for Social Engineering: Automated E2E Spear Phishing on Twitter,” ZeroFOX Research will investigate social media as a highly vulnerable attack vector for targeting and compromising individuals with machine-generated attacks. The session takes place Thursday, August 4, at 12:00pm PT in the Mandalay Bay South Seas ABE Room in Las Vegas, NV.
Additionally, at DEF CON 2016, ZeroFOX Research will be leading a session titled, “Attacks on Enterprise Social Media,” which will explore the taxonomy of social media impersonation attacks, phishing scams, information leakage, espionage and more. The presentation will provide categorizations for these threats and develop a methodology for adapting existing incident response processes to handle social media threats. The session takes place Saturday, August 6, from 2:10 – 3:00pm PT on the 26th Floor of Bally's Indigo Tower in Las Vegas, NV.
“As social media becomes a major platform for business communication, cybercriminals are exploiting its inherent trust and widespread connectivity to target employees and customers more and more every day,” commented James C. Foster, co-founder of ZeroFOX. “As the pioneer in this social media threat space, it’s our job to shine a light on new threats in order to help our clients make more informed security decisions. With the virtual explosion in scale and impact of social media threats, it is time we have a dedicated team of experts in security, neural science, machine learning and social media to lead the industry against these threats.”
“Social media represents one of the largest, most dynamic risks to organizational security, and ZeroFOX has been leading the charge to protect people and brands against these risks since inception,” said Raggo. “I am excited to be joining the ZeroFOX Research team to highlight these threats and expose the damage social media attacks cause to organizations around the globe. Collaborating with such a curious and determined group of scientists, investigating new territory and feeding the company’s continuous innovation is a security researcher’s dream.”
Leveraged by top global businesses, brands and government agencies, the ZeroFOX Platform continuously monitors across social media for security risks and business threats targeting employees, customers and organizations. Using intelligent data collection and an automated scriptable analysis engine, the ZeroFOX Platform automatically identifies and remediates impersonator accounts, phishing attacks, fraud, customer scams, exposed personally identifiable information (PII) and more. ZeroFOX enables organizations to maximize their investments in social media to drive customer engagement and top line revenue while minimizing risks and remediation costs.
Black Hat attendees can meet the ZeroFOX Research team at booth #1032 during the show. To learn more about ZeroFOX at Black Hat visit: https://www.zerofox.com/blackhat/ or to stay abreast of the latest research, please visit: https://www.zerofox.com/resources/.
About ZeroFOX:
ZeroFOX, the innovator of social media
security, protects modern organizations from the dynamic risks of social
media and digital channels. Each day, ZeroFOX’s cloud-based, SaaS
platform processes millions of posts and accounts across the social
landscape, spanning Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Google+,
YouTube and more. Using targeted data collection, intelligent analysis
and automated remediation, ZeroFOX protects businesses and government
agencies around the world against phishing attacks, information loss,
account compromise, fraud, compliance violations, and financial loss.
Led by a team of information security and high-growth start-up veterans,
ZeroFOX has raised over $40M in funding from NEA, Highland Capital and
others, and has collected top industry awards such as the SINET16
Champion, Dark Reading’s Top Security Startups to Watch, Tech Council of
Maryland’s Technology Company of the Year, and the Security Tech
Trailblazer of the Year. To find out more information about ZeroFOX or
to join our team, please visit: https://www.zerofox.com.
