• by Ray Schultz , February 18, 2019

Symantec Corp. has introduced an automated tool to help firms block fraudulent emails, the company announced on Friday. 

Earlier in the week, the U.S. company said it had acquired Luminate, a Tel Aviv-based firm that offers a service called Secure Access Cloud.

Terms were not disclosed, but an outside estimate put it at $200 million, according to Israel 21c.

The new product, Email Fraud Protection, automatically monitors approved third-party senders, removing the need for administrators to manually set and maintain email sender parameters, the company claims.

The objective is to help firms save money and time “that can be spent elsewhere in the organization,” states Patrick Gardner, senior vice president, email security, Symantec. 

Symantec quotes FBI statistics showing that business email compromise attacks grew by 136% over the past two years, with losses totaling $12.5 billion.

Luminate offers a service designed to help firms navigate what it calls a cloud-oriented, perimeter-less world.

Symantec anticipates that more companies will “operate their business on infrastructure that is managed by multiple third parties such as Azure, AWS and Google,” states Greg Clark, president and CEO, Symantec.

He adds: “In this rapidly evolving world, trust in external infrastructure must be carefully considered as corporations can outsource infrastructure but must also remain responsible for data and users.”

Symantec previously acquired several other Israeli firms, including Javelin Networks, which was purchased for $30 million last November, and Skycure and Fireglass, which were bought for $250 million apiece in July 2017, according to Israel21c.