Dear CISO: One way to make attachments as fast and as safe as E-mail…
Regarding your response written on the Symantec website https://www.symantec.com/connect/forums/sanitizing-email-attachements-what-i-would-have?list_context_id=1611&list_context_type=sc_forum regarding your plea of what you would like to have when sanitizing E-mail attachments. It’s true everybody needs E-mails. And let’s be really frank, everybody needs those E-mails to have clean attachments. You cannot separate between the E-mails and their attachments. Standard formats even word, excel, pdf and image files are unsecure. And in the days of content, this is insane. There needs to be a standard operating procedure, that attachments are being communicated as fast and as safe as E-mail.
We agree that the best solution would include the following:
Analyze – Screen files as a complex container
Remediate – Block / remove / reset unwanted embedded files and objects
Synthesize – Rebuild / renew / reassemble new filtered files
Magic right? Check out our product SelectorIT, a state-of-the-art protection of Advanced Threats within files. SelectorIT provides Data Sanitization and Laundering, using YazamTech’s unique technology for Deep Content Filtering. SelectorIT has been designed to provide automatic Advanced Filtering, both blocking threats within incoming files to the secured network, and preventing leakage within outgoing files from the secured network. SelectorIT provides protection against various modern threats: APT (Advanced Persistent Threats), Zero Day Attacks, Ransomware and Data Leakage (visible and hidden). Just a few of the things you mentioned in your lament.
It’s been a long time coming. We feel much the same as you with regards to the large and gaping holes that exist in current solutions. We agree that E-mail and their attachments cannot be separated but must be addressed as one problem, and therefore one solution. This ensures that the attachments are as fast and as safe as the container of the body of the E-mail itself. The trend of current popular in use security systems at the E-mail gateways, such as: Anti-Virus, Mail-Relay, Firewalls and Sandboxes, HAVE NOT STOPPED Email attacks which are realized by attachments containing a wide range of harmful content and objects. Attachments need to have recursive filtering.