Credit: Vladimir Solomyani
Mimecast has acquired Chicago-based security messaging company eTorch, trading as MessageControl.
The acquisition adds MessageControl’s machine learning- (ML) powered security capabilities to prevent social engineering and human identity attacks to the cyber security vendor as part of its “Email Security 3.0 strategy”.
The platform uses ML to warn users about emails from untrustworthy senders, as well as picking up when a user is about to send an email to the wrong recipient by accident.
It will also add protection for end users utilising productivity applications, such as Microsoft 365.
Peter Bauer, CEO at Mimecast, said the first half of 2020 presented the need for more solutions to “protect against the latest weaponised and unweaponised attacks”.
“MessageControl is a natural complement to Mimecast’s suite of cyber resilience solutions – from email and web security through brand protection, security awareness training and data protection,” he said.
“Its artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities will offer additional layers of defence by evolving and ‘learning’ the customer environment and user behaviours over time.”
Paul Everton, founder and CTO at MessageControl, added the acquisition gives MessageControl the chance to expand its range of protection.
“We’re excited to join the Mimecast team as we continue on our mission to stop social engineering and human identity attacks,” Everton said.
The vendor's move to bolster its email security capabilities follows its acquisition of Israeli cyber security start-up Segasec in January – a company which also provides email phishing protection.
