Shionogi – Email Security

The challenge

Businesses like Shionogi are always on the radar of unscrupulous cyber criminals motivated by money, fame and even politics. A 2018 report by OCISIA concluded that, within the pharmaceutical and biotech industry, £9.2bn has been lost through IP theft, £7.6bn pilfered by industrial espionage and £2.2bn taken from extortion.

Now add a pandemic into the mix, and there’s even more motivation and ammunition for cyber criminals to execute their strikes. There was a large spike in cyber attacks – mostly phishing attempts and ransomware attacks – during the coronavirus pandemic, and Shionogi felt the assault.

At the beginning of the UK’s lockdown period, Shionogi approached their OryxAlign team worried about the sharp rise in spam and spoofed emails they were receiving. They were already receiving above average spoofing and threat emails, however from lockdown they estimated that the increase of bogus communications was around 70% higher.

With concerns over the amount and professionalism of phishing emails targeting their employees, and failure of their current spam filter to protect the company, they needed a better email security solution as quickly as possible.

Business benefits

Shionogi noticed an immediate decrease in spoofed and spam emails following the successful implementation.

“We were getting around 100 ‘threat’ emails per month which were increasing at a steady monthly rate before MimeCast. Since MimeCast we have received ZERO, which is astonishing,” said Bruno Elias, Senior IT Manager, Shionogi Europe. “The Mimecast implementation has given us control and better oversight over what emails come into our organisation, especially unwanted and risky emails. It’s a peace of mind now!”

On top of this, Shionogi employees have had crucial time freed up; instead of wasting minutes, and even hours, checking the validity of emails, they can now focus on their main duties knowing that the emails they receive have been vetted to the highest degree.