What is Collaboration Security?

How does collaboration security work?

Collaboration Security extends threat protection from email security across your collaboration tools, like Microsoft Office 365, by detecting malicious files and links to prevent attack campaigns on your internal and external file, chat communications and enterprise applications. Use a multi-layered approach to detect and prevent threats, including: 

• File inspection: Scans files shared through tools such as OneDrive and SharePoint to identify malicious content like malware, phishing links, and weaponized documents to stop them before they reach the end user.
• URL analysis: Teams and Slack often include shared links. Collaboration security inspects incoming URLs for malicious activity, preventing users from accessing phishing websites or downloading harmful software.
• Behavioral analysis: By monitoring behavior such as unusual file sharing or access attempts, collaboration security detects and responds to potential compromises.
• Threat intelligence: Proactively identify and block emerging threats by leveraging a vast database of known threats and attack patterns to stop ransomware campaigns targeting chat applications or credential theft schemes in tools like OneDrive.
• Integration with existing security tools: Seamlessly integrates with existing security infrastructure, including endpoint protection, firewalls, and security information and event management (SIEM) systems for comprehensive security posture.

What problems are solved by collaboration security?

The popularity and expansion collaboration tools, coupled with the speed of file sharing, significantly increases the attack surface. Under the 'shared responsibility model' means SaaS providers secure their infrastructure, but not the files shared within. For example, malicious files uploaded to SaaS apps like applicant tracking systems remain unscanned, leaving users vulnerable. If unchecked, the flow of external files presents a major security risk making them prime targets for cyber attacks, leading to critical challenges organizations face in securing them:

• Data breaches: Attackers target collaboration platforms to steal sensitive data, including customer information, financial records, and intellectual property.
• Malware infections: Malicious files disguised as legitimate documents shared through SharePoint or Slack can quickly spread across users, infecting devices and networks.
• Phishing attacks: Threat actors launch social engineering attacks via chats to trick users into revealing sensitive credentials or downloading malware.
• Business disruption: Attacks on collaboration platforms cause downtime, disrupt business operations, and lead to productivity losses, downtime, and reputational damage.

How is collaboration security different from email security?

While email and enterprise security focus on securing communications and the broader organizational infrastructure, file sharing via collaboration platforms introduces a new way for adversaries to enter the environment. Tools like Teams, Slack, and Google Workspace integrate messaging, file sharing, and real-time collaboration, creating a dynamic, interconnected ecosystem.  

Such interconnectedness introduces unprotected attack vectors that traditional security measures can't handle. Without dedicated protection, organizations risk exposing sensitive data, disrupting workflows, and falling victim to increasingly sophisticated attacks.

• Expanding attack surface: Collaboration platforms introduce new entry points for attacks beyond email, exploiting vulnerabilities in file sharing, messaging, and video conferencing. For example, Teams' features can become pathways for malware or phishing attacks.
• Dynamic threats:Collaboration tools are constantly evolving, and attackers can launch real-time scams or deepfake impersonations, making it difficult for traditional email security solutions to keep up with emerging threats.
• Limited visibility: Email security solutions often lack visibility into the entire collaboration ecosystem, leaving organizations vulnerable to attacks from other sources. For instance, unauthorized file access in Google Workspace, suspicious link activity in Slack, and a compromised Zoom meeting might evade detection.

What are some examples of collaboration threats?

The following real-world incidents underscore the importance of implementing robust collaboration security measures.

DarkGat Attack (2023): Attackers are utilizing the DarkGate malware-as-a-service to compromise systems. Trellix IVX for Collaboration Platform's advanced detection capabilities identified and stopped the attack, mitigating potential data breaches.

Microsoft Teams Hack (2020): Attackers tricked employees into downloading a malicious file disguised as a legitimate Excel document, compromising the accounts and leading to credential theft.

Google Drive Social Engineering Scam (2020): Attackers created a document with malicious links and tagged victims, asking for feedback. When victims clicked on the links, they were redirected to a phishing site where attackers stole their credentials.

GitHub Repository Compromise (2019): Attackers gained access to the GitHub repositories of several companies by sharing a malicious file containing code that allowed them to control the affected systems and steal data.

What are the key capabilities of collaboration security?

Collaboration security encompasses a range of capabilities designed to protect, detect, and respond to various threats of the modern, interconnected work environment. When evaluating collaboration security solutions, consider these essential capabilities:

• Comprehensive protection: Secure all aspects of collaboration, including email, file sharing, messaging, and video conferencing.
• Advanced threat detection: Utilize advanced techniques like machine learning, artificial intelligence, and behavioral analysis to identify and block sophisticated threats.
• Seamless integration: Integrate seamlessly to productivity platforms and enterprise applications, providing a unified view of threats and enabling automated response actions.
• Ease of use: Deploy, manage, and use while minimizing the burden on IT teams.
• Scalability: Scale to meet the needs of growing organizations and evolving collaboration environments.

How to secure online collaboration tools?

Take a step-by-step approach to implementing workspace security:

• Optimize email security: Begin by auditing and improving your existing email security infrastructure. Existing tools struggle to keep up with attacker techniques and miss emerging, multi-stage attacks. Consider an additional layer of protection with newer technologies.
• Protect collaboration platforms: Implement threat detection to ensure you and your partners don't accidentally share malware. Leverage the same core detection, analysis, and blocking tools used by your email security to benefit from a larger dataset of known threats.
• Extend security across all applications: Continuously inspect objects on intake to protect both custom-built and third-party applications by blocking threats before they enter your environment.

Trellix's approach to collaboration security

Trellix recognizes the critical importance of collaboration security and offers a comprehensive suite of protection technologies spanning email, collaboration tools, and enterprise applications to secure the broader collaboration between an organization and its customers, suppliers, contractors, and regulators.

By extending the same protection from email to all possible vectors: shared collaboration environments, document repositories, and business interactions such as receiving resumes, invoices, customer feedback, or project plans, an organization can secure all aspects of the modern extended enterprise and catch threats that others miss.

Here's what sets Trellix apart

• Disrupt sophisticated attacks: Using machine learning and AI-driven, multi-layered detection engines, paired with real-time threat intelligence from our extensive sensor network, Trellix consistently stays ahead of attackers.
• Unobtrusive file inspection: Secures collaboration platforms to ensure confident collaboration with minimal end-user impact. Frictionless file and URL inspection ensures employees and partners can confidently collaborate without fear of unintentional compromise. Trellix only notifies users when a malicious object is shared.
• Advanced email security: Goes beyond traditional email security, leveraging advanced security analytics to detect and defend against multi-stage campaigns, including phishing, impersonation, and spear-phishing attacks. It offers flexible deployment options as a secure email gateway (SEG) or integrated cloud email security (ICES) solution, seamlessly integrating with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.
• Comprehensive protection: Extends protection to platforms like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and Google Workspace, leveraging a single detection solution across all tools. This approach reduces costs and increases detection efficacy, ensuring quick time to value with robust APIs that enable continuous inspection and require no infrastructure changes.
• Unified application security: Provides a unified solution for securing all enterprise applications, both built and bought. It leverages a consistent, proven detection solution across various applications, including Salesforce, Ariba, Microsoft Azure, and Workday. This approach ensures quick time to value with robust APIs that enable continuous inspection and require no infrastructure changes.

Trellix IVX - Intelligent Virtual Execution

Trellix IVX is a powerful addition to the Trellix Collaboration Security, offering a signature-less, dynamic analysis engine that captures and confirms zero-day and targeted APT attacks. IVX identifies attacks that evade traditional signature-based defenses by detonating suspicious files, web objects, URLs, and email attachments within a proprietary hypervisor instrumented for over 200 potential simultaneous executions.

How Trellix IVX works:

1. Pre-filtering and threat intelligence: IVX compares the submitted object to threat actors' latest known tactics and other potentially malicious behaviors using Trellix Global Threat Intelligence gleaned from over 40,000 Trellix customers and partners worldwide.
2. Multi-flow analysis: IVX conducts over 200 simultaneous executions, covering multiple operating systems, service packs, applications, and application versions. Unlike detection solutions that focus on a single attack object, IVX performs multi-flow analysis to break down and fully understand the full context of a multi-stage attack.
3. Behavioral analysis: IVX analyzes the object's behavior within a virtual environment, identifying malicious actions like file modifications, registry changes, network communication, and attempts to evade detection.
4. Verdict and contextual analysis: If the object is malicious, IVX provides a detailed report with contextual analysis, including MITRE ATT&CK mapping, extracted objects, IOCs, and more.

Key Features of Trellix IVX for Collaboration Platforms and Enterprise Applications:

• Signatureless detection: Identifies zero-day exploits and confirms web attacks, blocking callbacks and subsequent malware downloads over multiple protocols.
• Multi-stage inspection and blocking: Accurately block advanced malware that infects networks to steal resources and sensitive data.
• Custom-built hypervisor: Utilizes a custom-built hypervisor with built-in countermeasures explicitly designed for malware analysis, enabling peak performance and the ability to detect sandbox-aware and evasion tactics.
• Comprehensive detection: Supports over 200 file types and integrates with all major cloud storage solutions and web applications.
• Flexible deployment: IVX is available on-premises or as a cloud-native service, offering flexible deployment options.

Trellix IVX is a powerful tool for organizations seeking to enhance their collaboration security posture, enabling them to detect and prevent even the most sophisticated threats.

Get started with Trellix IVX for Collaboration Platforms and IVX for Enterprise Applications:

Ready to secure your collaboration environment? Contact Trellix today for a free demo and learn how Trellix Collaboration Security, powered by Trellix IVX, can protect your organization from emerging threats.