Secure Slack and Teams Before It's Too Late

When you think of phishing, you think of email.

That's true, but here's the thing: 

Phish can be sent over Slack and Microsoft Teams. And unless you're proactively protecting those services, you are not secure on those platforms. If phishers have a delivery method to broadcast malicious payload, they will take advantage.

Take web hooks, for example. Slack allows 3rd parties to inject content into group feeds via webhooks; all they need to know is a special URL to publish content, often with little to no authentication. Phishers disguise as the 3rd party and share malicious links that reach large employee groups. You hear the ding and click instinctively; that’s their hope.

Plus, both Slack and Teams allow third-party add-ons and integrations to boost productivity. Companies can link their Dropbox, G-Suite and thousands of other apps to their Slack or Teams accounts.

External apps connected to Slack or Teams bring their own security flaws and attackers are fond of using tools with weak security but over-reaching access as back doors. Any employee can add any integration, without following any protocol or company policy broadening the attack surface. 

Malware and phishing are on the rise and it won't stay limited to email. 

Does your anti-phishing provider protect Teams and Slack? Here's a few questions you need to ask:

• Do they have Data Leak Prevention (DLP) that extends to text messages, files and images?
• Are all files scanned for malware?
• Are all links scanned for malicious payloads? Are all malicious links blocked within both files and messages?
• Can suspicious logins and compromised accounts be identified and remediated?
• Is there an end-user education workflow, to notify users of policy violations, quarantine requests and more?
• Are all these protections and actions visible within the same pane of glass as email protection?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, or "on the roadmap", then they can't fully protect Teams or Slack.

Whether every piece of communication is done in Teams or Slack, or it's just used as a virtual water cooler, these protections--the kind that Avanan provides--are absolutely vital.