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Growing global contingent workforce management company, CXC, has engaged with Tecala to strengthen its email protection framework, significantly reducing the number of malicious messages received by staff. As well as using advanced AI technology to prevent malicious attacks in the cloud before they reach the inbox, the Next Generation Email Security platform also detects emails coming from unknown or suspicious addresses and reduces the volume of spam to employee’s inboxes.
Established in 1992, contingent workforce management company CXC Global has grown to become one of the largest organisations in its sector. With operations spanning more than 50 countries, the firm helps companies manage contractors and casual staff by assisting with everything from onboarding and invoicing to payroll and risk compliance.
As the company has grown, its 340 staff have become increasingly reliant on email as a key communications channel. Enabling fast and effective communications between CXC’s teams and their clients, it also supports administrative workflows and provides a documented record between CXCs teams and their clients and contractors.
About two years ago, a comprehensive review was undertaken of the company’s IT security posture. All elements were examined to determine areas where protection levels would need to be enhanced to meet the challenges of the evolving threat landscape.
“The existing email gateway we had in place was no longer delivering the level of security we required for our messaging infrastructure,” says CXC Global’s Director of Technology, Dominic Sargent. “We were aware that it was legacy technology that needed to be replaced, because the cyber threats we were increasingly facing could too easily by-pass traditional filters. This meant that, once a threat actor was through the gateway, they potentially could have full access to the entire email platform.”
“Because the platform relied on signature-based email filtering, it was no longer effective,” he says. “The repercussion of this was, our users had become a first line of defence, which was not acceptable.”
Added to this threat, was the rapid increase in spam emails landing in employee’s inboxes on a daily basis. Sargent knew that this was not only an additional threat but was also a major hindrance to the productivity of CXC’s global teams.
CXC already had a long-term partnership with Tecala. Collaborating with its Cyber Security Services consultants, Sargent and his IT leadership team set out to determine which email security platform would meet the company’s global requirements.
A shortlist of potential replacements was carefully reviewed before a decision was made to commission Tecala to deploy Avanan Email Security, from Check Point Software Technologies.
“We were very impressed by the way Tecala took the time to fully engage with us and understand the email security issues we were facing,” he says. “We agreed that the Check Point offering would deliver next-level security for all our users. With the decision made, Tecala commenced implementation.”
The deployment began with a pilot program covering a small number of users. “Each user’s experience with the new platform was evaluated before additional users were added,” Sargent explains. “The new security platform was rolled out alongside the existing tools with users gradually migrated from one to the other, until it was being used by all staff across the company.”
“The project was led by our own cyber security team,” explains Sargent, “but Tecala’s head of Cyber Security Services, Murray Mills, talked us through each stage, and thoroughly explained each decision before it was made by us. So we were accountable for the outcome, but we were guided and supported through the process to ensure we achieved everything we needed.”
CXC Global, Director of Technology – Dominic Sargent
With the new email security platform fully operational, company staff soon started to see the benefits. Previously, almost every staff member would receive at least one malicious message each day. But with the new platform in place, this number has reduced to near-zero.
“Since going live with the new security protection in January, we have stopped around 60,000 spam emails that would previously have ended up in staff inboxes,” says Sargent. “We also know that we’ve prevented approximately 1500 separate phishing campaigns from impacting our users.”
Sargent says the new security platform has also identified around 350 emails where the sender was not who they claimed to be. With the new system, if an email arrives from a new sender, it is considered riskier, and if the overall risk of the email is considered too high, it is then quarantined. This has significantly reduced the chances of phishing campaigns being successful.
The Next Generation Email Security platform also has an AI-driven contextual awareness capability, that allows it to interpret typical communication patterns. This enables it to identify suspicious or unusual activities, and flag these for closer examination by the IT team.
Furthermore, it’s not just malicious or threatening emails that are put under the platform’s radar. With unsolicited spam emails becoming a major distraction and unwanted added administrative burden, Sargent explains: “Tecala’s system allows us to identity spam emails and separate those from pure focus emails. This simple tool has significantly reduced spam emails to the inbox, saving our teams precious time in reviewing and separating the focus emails from the spam.”
CXC Global, Director of Technology – Dominic Sargent
CXC’s IT team is continuing to work closely with Tecala to ensure the security measures now in place continue to deliver the level of protection that is required. This is important as the techniques used by cybercriminals continue to change over time.
Importantly, for organisations like CXC that have international operations, this also means staying up to date with regulation and compliance that are constantly changing in each jurisdiction CXC operates within.
“With Tecala working alongside us, we’re more confident of staying in step with our regulation and compliance requirements,” says Sargent. “A good example is the updates in GDPR in Europe and the APRA CPS updates here. Each guideline impacts our business, and Tecala plays an important role in keeping us up to date and compliant, both locally and regionally.”
“We now have a much greater sense of calm when it comes to email security,” says Sargent. “Staff are finding they can be more productive as they are not having to deal with large volumes of unwanted messages.”
“We have also benefited from the way Tecala looks at email security from a holistic perspective and embeds it into an end-to-end security platform,” he says. “We now have a greater awareness at CXC re our responsibility of data and the protection of our users. Since engaging with Tecala we’ve increased our CIS 18 Assessment score. And, because the board have invested heavily in this initiative, these positive outcomes have been really well received in the business.”
Sargent says he looks forward to continuing to work with Tecala to maintain the company’s security posture and make any adjustments that might be required in the future.
“Tecala continues to be a valuable technology partner for us,” he says. “Their Cyber Security Service offering is a full 24-7 eyes on the glass service, with full feedback loops and reporting in near real time. Many of our competitors have been breached or have bled confidential information on clients or contractors. We definitely don’t want to be one of those businesses in the news.”
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Growing global contingent workforce management company, CXC, has engaged with Tecala to strengthen its email protection framework, significantly reducing the number of malicious messages received by staff.
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