One thing’s for sure. It’s buying season.
The billion pound post-World Cup transfer merry-go-round is just about to kick in and we just spent £15 on cold treats for the office. Almond Magnums. The Rolls-Royce of ice-creams.
But the spending news dominating the headlines is that Mimecast has acquired Ataata Inc, a cyber-security training company who reduce the security risk associated with human error.
The financial details of the deal remain undisclosed.
Research suggests that 95% of data security breaches involve some form of human error, from inadvertently sharing a password or clicking a malicious link to leaving your laptop in a taxi. As Mimecast founder and CEO Peter Bauer says, ‘As cyber-attacks continue to find new ways to bypass traditional threat detection methods, it’s essential to educate your employees in a way that changes behaviour.’
A similar sentiment is evident on the Ataata website:
‘Human error is involved in 95% of all security breaches. But humans are maddeningly careless and resistant to change. Employees’ casual mistakes lead to disaster all the time — and cost people their jobs. To change security culture effectively, employees have to know what to do, care enough to improve, and then do what’s right when it matters.’
In their press release, Mimecast were especially buoyant, suggesting that the deal will lay the groundwork for ‘most effective cybersecurity awareness training program imaginable’.
Quite a boast but the logic is sound.
What Exactly Do Ataata Do?
By converting behaviour observations into quantifiable risk metrics, customers will be able to measure the effectiveness of their cyber-security User Awareness Training (UAT). The presser went on to say that the deal ‘will result in the creation of a single cloud-based platform which will calculate an employee’s potential risk and susceptibility to today’s cybersecurity threats such as phishing campaigns, failing to recognize malicious websites, and more.’
Once an employee is issued with a score, they will be given the appropriate level of training which will, hopefully, lower the risk of their susceptibility to attack.
It’s too early to know how the acquisition of Ataata will fold into the Mimecast business but if we were to guess, we think that the sensible route would be for Mimecast to feed their threat intelligence into Ataata’s platform for the most up-to-date simulations and they might end up doing that but as we said, it’s too early to know with certainty how the new set-up will work.
What we are relatively sure of is that the new tech will be pretty cheap. Prices haven’t been disclosed yet but from industry whispers, we believe they intend to make the UAT accessible to all and not just the big boys.
Michael Madon, the co-founder and CEO of Ataata said that ‘organisations need to realise their employee’s role as the ‘last line of defence’, and therefore human error in regards to cyber-security can be costly to both the employee and the organisation as a whole.’
Let’s be perfectly honest, cyber-security training workshops don’t get employees excited like, say, a day out on a river cruise with lunch and booze but Ataata seem to do things a little differently.
Madon added that ‘Cyber-security training and awareness doesn’t need to be difficult or boring’ as is patently evident by the tone of their website. Who said IT security training guys didn’t know how to have fun…!
** THE PERFECT SEGUEWAY** Ataata have some excellent, light-hearted videos on their website which are absolutely worth checking out!
In a 2017 report by Gartner, the market for security awareness computer-based training is set to grow to over $1.1BN by 2020 and in addition, a study by Mimecast and Vanson Bourne, a tech-centric market research company suggested that a rise in phishing attacks was declared by 90% of participating organisations but only 11% admitted that they offered regular training in how to deal with them…
Do your employees know how to recognise and/or deal with cyber-security attacks? Be honest now…
For all things cloud, email info@koncisesolutions.com or call +44 (0) 20 7078 0789 and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Have a good week.
Koncise Solutions
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