Shionogi – Email Security
Sector
Pharma
No. of Users
240+
Location
London
Client Since
2016
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.
The solution
When it comes to stopping targeted phishing attacks, time is of the essence and so the OryxAlign security team immediately set out evaluating Shionogi’s current cyber security setup. It was concluded that their then spam filtering solution wasn’t the best on the market, and they would need something much more robust.
Taking into account Shionogi’s infrastructure, as well as OryxAlign’s regular evaluation of best-of-breed solutions, it was decided that Mimecast was the best option for the business.
Mimecast provides a set of strong email security services designed to provide next generation protection against advanced email-borne threats including direct domain spoofing, malicious URLs and malware.
Following a technical scope, including design and consultancy regarding the many security benefits Mimecast has to offer, OryxAlign engineers launched the setup and configuration of Mimecast. This included rerouting Shionogi’s email through Mimecast before they reach Office 365. It took some tweaking within Office 365 to accept inbound emails from the new spam filter, but the implementation ran smoothly.
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.
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