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CITY AND URBAN COMMUNITY OF DUNKIRK

ENHANCES MICROSOFT 365 EMAIL SECURITY WITH VADE FOR M365

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The victim of targeted attacks, the City and Urban Community of Dunkirk chose Vade for M365 to strengthen email security and protect its users and Office 365 applications.

 

A victim of targeted email attacks, the City and Urban Community of Dunkirk was determined to strengthen their email security while migrating to Microsoft 365. Dunkirk chose Vade for M365 to protect its users against advanced email threats. In the first month alone, Vade detected nearly 600 phishing emails and six malware attacks. Today, Dunkirk reports increased protection and ongoing financial and operational savings, thanks the simplicity of the solution

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THE CHALLENGE

In 2015, a phishing email ignited a ransomware attack that resulted in five days of production downtime. As a result, the joint IT department at the City and Urban community of Dunkirk decided to make email security a priority. When he arrived at Dunkirk, Flavien Mailly, head of infrastructure and production in the joint IT department, had one goal: avoid a repeat of the incident from 2015.


When Mailly joined the team, the IT department had just begun the migration from historical Lotus Notes to Microsoft 365. The migration presented an opportunity to strengthen protection against malicious emails. “Obviously, the question of keeping the existing vendor came up,” Mailly said. “But apart from the question of pricing, we weren’t satisfied with the responsiveness of the provider’s support teams or the localization of the solution for France. Moreover, the vendor offered only local installation, just on the workstations. If we have to migrate to an entirely cloud-based email solution, the email protection should be cloud-based, too."

 

THE SOLUTION

The IT department met Vade at the International Cybersecurity Forum (ICF). After receiving a demo, Dunkirk decided to launch a POC to test the effectiveness of the solution. At the time, the Vade solution was in classic cloud mode, which required an MX redirection to filter emails.

Vade assured Dunkirk that a cloud-native version natively integrated with Microsoft 365 was coming. This promised interesting possibilities and was in line with both the migration project and the IT department’s objectives.

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“The installation was a bit more complex than it would be today,” said Mailly, “because we were still in classic cloud. But once deployed, CONCLUSION A victim of targeted email attacks, the City and Urban Community of Dunkirk was determined to strengthen their email security while migrating to Microsoft 365. Dunkirk chose Vade for M365 to protect its users against advanced email threats. In the first month alone, Vade detected nearly 600 phishing emails and six malware attacks. Today, Dunkirk reports increased protection and ongoing financial and operational savings, thanks the simplicity of the solution. Case study WHY THEY CHOSE VADE Ease of deployment and implementation Financial and operational gains Advanced protection against attacks sales@vadesecure.com everything was remarkably easy. Plus the Vade support teams were very active in assisting us, even investigating our Microsoft tenant to resolve configuration issues and working with Microsoft when necessary. In a world where downsizing is the norm, such a level of support is obviously very welcome.”

 

Vade for M365 was released mid-2018, and the City and Urban Community of Dunkirk migrated immediately. “The migration to Vade for M365 took five minutes,” said Mailly. Unlike non-native add-ons for Microsoft 365, Vade for M365 doesn’t require an MX change, simplifying deployment and making the solution invisible to hackers.

“It was absolute simplicity. And now, everything is managed by Vade, including upgrades. This is a change from having onsite installed products. Thanks to this, we can really focus on security management rather than on the tool itself.” As a result of this new efficiency, the IT has department has reported significant savings in administration time.

Dunkirk’s administrators log on to Vade for M365 for only five minutes per day—the time it takes to check for possible alerts (e.g., abnormal email volume) or to occasionally generate reports that are used to raise email security awareness among managers in other departments. For the everything else, the solution is autonomous.

WHY THEY CHOSE VADE

  • Ease of deployment and implementation
  • Financial and operational gains
  • Advanced protection against attacks
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RESULTS

Over the month of March 2020, a period of high threat activity due to municipal elections, Vade for M365 blocked six malware attacks, 6,285 spam, 558 phishing emails, and 441 targeted spear phishing attempts. The number of spam messages received was particularly low: 6,285 spam over one month for 2,600 protected workstations. That’s an average of two and a half spam emails per month and per workstation.

“Microsoft’s native filtering is effective against generic spam, but it’s with more sophisticated, targeted spam that Vade for M365 reveals its full value. Because the emails that get past the various standard filters are the most dangerous and the best designed, they require completely different expertise to detect and block them,” said Mailly. “Hence our interest in enhancing Microsoft 365 email security with the advanced protection from Vade.”

Paradoxically, Vade detected more spear phishing emails than phishing emails, even though spear phishing emails are generally the least numerous of email threats.

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To achieve such a result, the IT department chose to activate all the options offered by the Vade solution, including spam filtering, real-time URL analysis, and graymail classification, which filters non-priority emails into specific folders. Additionally, Vade’s spear phishing protection includes a warning banner that alerts the user if the solution suspects a spear phishing attempt. In the future, Dunkirk plans to integrate the solution into a future SIEM project to detect malicious emails that are designed to control servers for bots or malware.

BENEFITS FOR THE CITY AND THE URBAN COMMUNITY OF DUNKIRK

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Enhanced email security

Going beyond the traditional detection offered by Microsoft, Vade for M365 offers advanced protection against sophisticated email threats that bypass traditional filters.

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Ease of use and administration

With a set-it-and-forget-it configuration and no quarantine, Vade for M365 seamlessly blocks email threats without continual maintenance and management.

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Operational gains

The simplicity of Vade for M365 requires only daily admin management, freeing up Dunkirk’s IT department to focus on strategic tasks.

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