Can you defend against email threats better than the security companies?

How well do the main email platforms handle threats? Is it worth paying for additional email security from a third-party specialist? Or could you create your own secure email server (DIY email security) and get top-grade protection for free?

Our reports help you choose the best enterprise security products and services.

Compare a major email platform with a third-party service and an open-source solution.

In this special, one-of-a-kind report we investigate how well one of the world’s largest email providers performs when trying to filter out harmful security threats from your email. We also assess the benefits of a well-known email security service that you can bolt onto any other email solution. And finally, we built an open-source email server running a combination of security and management tools to see how well it compared.

We wanted to answer the questions:

• Is there value to be had from specialist email security services?
• Should you run your own server?
• Can you combine your own server with a specialist service?

DIY Email Security

In this report we compare a major platform with a third-party email security service to see if it’s worth spending extra on security. We worked with both companies but neither wished to be identified in this report. We reported back to them all of the threats that they identified (and missed) and provided them with an opportunity to dispute any mistakes that they identified. This report is the result of that engagement.

Choose your reports and reviews carefully

We pride ourselves on a level of transparency that elevates our work above the less open reports available. But don’t just take our word for it. Our results help vendors improve their products and buyers choose the best for their own needs.

3 reasons our enterprise tests are trustworthy

This security report compares anti-malware products. Its job is to help you make informed buying decisions.

Our reports help you choose the best enterprise anti-malware product that can protect you from ransomware and other types of attack.

Three reasons our security tests are the most trustworthy

There are a few questions you should ask when you look at a security report. These are all very important but in random order here they are:

1. Is the test realistic?
2. Does the tester explain how they tested?
3. Does the tester explain how they make money
   from the report?

There are all sorts of other little details to consider, which are often things security vendors get anxious about. These include technical details relating to the testing environment and the threats used to test the products. But ultimately, as a reader, you should care most about the list above.

Choose your reviews carefully

If you see a security report that isn’t realistic and transparent treat it with extra care. For more information about fake anti-virus reviews please see our blog post on the subject. If you want to make the most informed purchase of security software choose your reviews carefully.

We pride ourselves on a level of transparency that elevates our work above the less open reports available. But don’t just take our word for it. This report has gone through the AMTSO certification process to ensure that we say what we’re going to do; do it; and can prove it. Our results help vendors improve their products and buyers choose the best for their own needs.

Deep and direct ransomware testing

We tested CrowdStrike Falcon against a range of ransomware attacks designed to extort victims. These attacks were realistic, using the same tactics and techniques that were used against victims in recent months.

Target systems, protected by CrowdStrike Falcon, were attacked by testers acting in the same way as we observe ransomware groups to behave.

Attacks were initiated from the start of the attack chain, using phishing email links and attachments, as just two examples. Each attack was run from the very start to its obvious conclusion, which means attempting to steal, encrypt and destroy sensitive data on the target systems.

Product factsheet:

Crowdstrike Falcon

Enterprise Advanced Security (Ransomware): CrowdStrike Falcon

Ransomware is the most visible, most easily understood cyber threat affecting businesses today. Paralysed computer systems mean stalled business and loss of earnings. On top of that, a ransom demand provides a clear, countable value to a threat. A demand for “one million dollars!” is easier to quantify than the possible leak of intellectual property to a competitor.

We have created a comprehensive test that shows how effective security products are when faced with the whole range of threats posed by ransomware itself and the criminal groups operating in the shadows.

In this report we have taken two main approaches to assessing how well products can detect and protect against ransomware.

Enterprise Advanced Security (Ransomware) Tested

This detailed report looks at ransomware detection during a full network attack; and protection against known ransomware attacks and their unknown variants. We include details about the different types of ransomware attacks, including the tactics used by different criminal groups.

How hard should a security test be?

Thank you for opening this report. I hope you’ll be able to use it to get a better idea about which anti-malware products you might want to buy (or get rid of!)

Our reports help you choose the best enterprise anti-malware product that can protect you from ransomware and other types of attack.

Enterprise Anti-Virus Testing

The report starts off with a list of products, each of which win impressive-looking awards. But have you considered what those awards mean? How come there aren’t any massive losers in the list? How hard is this security test anyway?

Baseline Testing

There are lots of ways you can test products. You could prod a teddy bear and say, “well, that looks good enough,” or you could take it to pieces and analyse every component forensically for build and functional quality. “This toy looks safe, its parts are large, soft and non-toxic, and we can’t burn it easily. Plus, it’s got big, cute eyes.” This could be a baseline for cuddly toys: SAFE, with cuteness as an extra bonus.

For anti-malware products we have to consider a few different things, including the following:

• Is it really an anti-malware product? Is it at least basically functional?
• Can it determine a good quantity of common malware, without blocking lots of useful software?
• Can it stop the malware, as well as simply detecting it?

Everyone tells you that you need it, but which one?

Which enterprise anti-virus is the best? Our reports help you choose the most appropriate enterprise anti-malware product that can protect your organisation from ransomware and other types of attack.

Choose the best enterprise anti-malware solution

Classic cybersecurity advice always includes a plea to, “install anti-virus” or “use endpoint protection software”. Journalists, bloggers and even governments hand this information out, as if it helps. Most platforms, including Microsoft Windows and Apple macOS, include anti-virus so the question then becomes, “which enterprise anti-virus?”

How do you choose?

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) provides some mature and detailed advice but stops short of helping readers work out which products might be most suitable. The only time it tries to help in this respect ends in a bizarre suggestion that you might prefer a product that implements the Anti-Malware Scan Interface (AMSI). This feature is only relevant if you are developing security software yourself.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the US gives advice on stopping ransomware. At the bottom of the list, including useful items such as, “update and patch” and “keep your personal information safe” is the instruction to, “install antivirus software, firewalls and email filters.” Nowhere does any such organisation help you choose which is the best or most appropriate for your organisation.

When you search for, “best business anti-virus” or, worse, “best home anti-virus” you’ll see millions of links to better or lesser-known magazine websites and slightly shady reseller’s blogs. Some of the most respectable technical websites run sensible and unbiased reviews and there’s where you start to get somewhere: opinions on interfaces and prices. But how effective are these products?

Find the best reviews

The best reviewers delegate the really technical business of testing endpoint security to the professional testers. If you read their reviews you’ll see our name in there somewhere.

This is because organisations such as SE Labs spend all of their time testing security products – it’s what we specialise in. In our case we learn how the criminals behave and then copy them closely. This produces the most realistic results you can hope to see in a public security test. We also ensure that our reports are reviewed by the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization (AMTSO) to validate that we’ve tested fairly.

We pride ourselves on a level of transparency that elevates our work above the less open reports available. But don’t just take our word for it. This report has gone through the AMTSO certification process to ensure that we say what we’re going to do; do it; and can prove it. Our results help vendors improve their products and buyers choose the best for their own needs.

Choose the best enterprise endpoint security solution

Welcome to the first edition of the Enterprise Advanced Security test that compares different endpoint security products directly. We look at how they handle the major threats that face all businesses, from the Global 100, down to medium enterprises. And most likely small businesses, too.

We give an overall score but also dig down into the details that your security team will care about. This report explains the different levels of coverage that these products provide.

An Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) product is more than anti-virus, which is why it requires advanced testing. This means testers must behave like real attackers, following every step of
an attack.

While it’s tempting to save time by taking shortcuts, a tester must go through an entire attack to truly understand the capabilities of EDR security products.

Full attack chain testing

Each step of the attack must be realistic too. You can’t just make up what you think bad guys are doing and hope you’re right. This is why SE Labs tracks cybercriminal behaviour and builds tests based on how bad guys try to compromise victims.

The cybersecurity industry is familiar with the concept of the ‘attack chain’, which is the combination of those attack steps.

Fortunately the MITRE organisation has documented each step with its ATT&CK framework. While this doesn’t give an exact blueprint for realistic attacks, it does present a general structure that testers, security vendors and customers (you!) can use to run tests and understand test results.

The Enterprise Advanced Security tests that SE Labs runs are based on real attackers’ behaviour. This means we can present how we run those attacks using a MITRE ATT&CK-style format.

Endpoint Detection Compared

You can see how ATT&CK lists out the details of each attack, and how we represent the way we tested, in Appendix A: Threat Intelligence, starting on page 15. This brings two main advantages: you can have confidence that the way we test is realistic and relevant, and you’re probably already familiar with this way of illustrating cyber attacks.

EDR is more than anti-virus

An Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) product is more than anti-virus, which is why it requires advanced testing. This means testers must behave like real attackers, following every step of an attack.

Intelligence-led testing

While it’s tempting to save time by taking shortcuts, a tester must go through an entire attack to truly understand the capabilities of EDR security products.

Each step of the attack must be realistic too. You can’t just make up what you think bad guys are doing and hope you’re right. This is why SE Labs tracks cybercriminal behaviour and builds tests based on how bad guys try to compromise victims.

Email security services tested

Cyber criminals often use email as a way to start an attack

A primary vector for cyber attacks, email services need to be secure. Email platforms provide one level of security while third-party companies offer additional services, claiming to increase protection.

Choose the best email security solution

Email security services don’t handle all threats in the same way. Some will be stopped dead, while others can infiltrate fully. Somewhere in the middle we see email quarantine systems, Junk folders and edited messages – emails that have their links, attachments and even the words in the message tampered with.

This tampering may effectively remove a threat, or it may not. There is a lot to assessing an email security solution!

How seriously do you take the email threat?

The approach that we take is to measure everything and then judge how important each result is. Our view is that keeping threats as far away from the user as possible is best. But sometimes security personnel need to see what’s coming in, so quarantines can be useful investigation tools. We have devised a scoring method that credits or penalises services according to our view on best outcomes.

Choose the best enterprise security product

By understanding the rules of security testing

Our reports help you choose the best enterprise security product that can protect you from ransomware and other types of attack.

Choose the best enterprise anti-malware solution

This report contains security testing results. You can compare the performance of a variety of products that claim to protect you against online threats. This, in theory, will help people and businesses choose the best security product.

But this is a free report. How can you trust that the high-scoring vendors didn’t just pay for their ranking? Do you suspect that some low-scoring vendors dropped out of the report? Or asked to be retested until they scored better?

What are the rules behind the scenes in security testing?

With security testing the stakes are high. From a customers’ perspective, the wrong decision could be disastrous to a business. Or a personal life.

So we, as testers, have a massive responsibility to do the right thing, meaning the honest thing. That means trying to involve as many reputable security vendors as possible in our tests and treating them all fairly.

Security vendors want to sell products and will do what they can to achieved strong marketing. That can involve appearing in weak tests or engaging with more ‘flexible’ testers. One strategy could be to test enough privately against competitors and then release the one report that shows your product at the top of the list.

We focus on strong technical testing and avoid purely marketing-led initiatives. We have awards for vendors who do well, but we stand out by assessing technology deeply and helping improve things for everyone.

Five simple rules

In our blog post Public and Private Testing we explain our five simple rules to help maintain the integrity of our reports. If you want to peak behind the curtain, to see how we work with security vendors, the information is all available online.

Testing Standards

For this report we also followed the only available Standard for anti-malware testing, the one run by the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization. This ensures that we do what we say we’ll do, and can prove it.

We pride ourselves on a level of transparency that elevates our work above the less open reports available. But don’t just take our word for it. This report has gone through the AMTSO certification process to ensure that we say what we’re going to do; do it; and can prove it. Our results help vendors improve their products and buyers choose the best for their own needs.

SE Labs tested IronNet IronDefense against a range of hacking attacks designed to compromise systems and penetrate target networks in the same way as criminals and other attackers breach systems and networks.

How we test

Full chains of attack were used, meaning that testers behaved as real attackers, probing targets using a variety of tools, techniques and vectors before attempting to gain lower-level and more powerful access. Finally, the testers/attackers attempted to complete their missions, which might include stealing information, damaging systems and connecting to other systems on the network.

Product factsheet:

APT groups include:

• FIN7 & Carbanak
• OilRig
• APT3
• APT29