Mimecast acquires anti-phishing technology provider MessageControl

Mimecast has acquired MessageControl, seeking to enhance its anti-phishing capabilities through the use of machine learning.

Financial details were not disclosed but the email security company says the acquisition will not have a material impact on its financial results for the 2021 fiscal year.

Recent research from Mimecast found that impersonation fraud, phishing, and internal threats or data leaks have increased by 60 per cent, 58 per cent and 43 per cent respectively over the last year.

MessageControl’s technology is designed to inspect email attributes and content and then apply machine learning to build a library of known and unknown patterns for an individual user. By improving over time, the company says its technology can make real-time decisions on more than one billion unique user behaviour data points.

MessageControl also helps to prevent misaddressed email data leaks by notifying employees before they accidentally send information to the wrong recipients by using historical sending patterns.

“MessageControl is a natural complement to Mimecast’s suite of cyber resilience solutions – from email and web security through brand protection, security awareness training, and data protection,” said Peter Bauer, chief executive officer at Mimecast.

“It’s artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities will offer additional layers of defence by evolving and ‘learning’ the customer environment and user behaviours over time,” he added.

Since being founded in 2003, Mimecast has pursued a strategy of acquisitions to build an all-round email and data security platform.

In 2018, Mimecast acquired cybersecurity training startup Ataata. It followed with the purchase of Solebit later that year for $88m. Solebit built a SaaS platform that targets zero-day malware and unknown threats.

In 2019, it acquired DMARC Analyser, a SaaS-based platform that offers Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) setup, management and analysis. DMARC is an email authentication protocol designed to give email domain owners the ability to protect their domain from unauthorized use.

At the beginning of this year, Mimecast acquired Segasec, a cybersecurity platform designed to guard against brand exploitation.

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