Forrester says “ArmorText Outclasses for SecOps…”: What Sets Us Apart

ArmorText has been recognized by Forrester as a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Secure Communications Solutions, Q3 2024. ArmorText’s out-of-band communication tools facilitate secure communications for Security Operations (SecOps) use cases that enable organizations to stay ahead of potential threats.

The Invisible Breach: Understanding Left of Bang

The unfortunate reality is that breaches can lurk undetected for extended periods—sometimes for hundreds of days prior to detection—creating significant vulnerabilities for organizations “Left of Bang” (“bang” being when a breach is finally recognized). During this Left of Bang period adversaries often monitor activities that SecOps teams undertake to prevent and detect security breaches, informing their attacks. A prime example of this is the activities of the Lapsus$ group, which managed to infiltrate and extort numerous high-profile companies by exploiting systemic vulnerabilities long before detection.

While significant attention by regulators and lawmakers is being placed on how organizations operate and communicate during a breach, organizations need to adopt a post-breach mentality in their pre-breach planning. In layman’s terms it means operating under the assumption that a breach has already occurred so they can set an even more proactive security posture. This mindset shift involves ensuring that communications and data handling protocols of security personnel, vulnerability management teams, and security operations teams are designed to withstand insider threats or external compromises.

ArmorText’s Secure Out of Band Collaboration™ platform supports this proactive approach by providing secure, out-of-band communications that safeguard sensitive data and communications from being intercepted or manipulated by adversaries. This preemptive strategy is not just about protecting against known threats but also about creating an environment where security teams are always engaged in a state of alert readiness, prepared to act swiftly and effectively no matter when a breach is detected.

ArmorText’s Proactive Defense Features

When email, messaging, and file-sharing capabilities are broken into and monitored by attackers, compromised credentials are often involved. But, this access can also be gained through compromised Identity Providers that enable attackers to present as valid users or to provision in their own administrative access.

ArmorText’s user+device / scope-of-review specific end-to-end encryption (E2EE) comes with significant benefits designed for SecOps, including mitigating account compromise risks – attackers logging in with exposed credentials do not possess the necessary decryption keys on their “fraudulent devices” and cannot expose your vulnerability management coordination, incident response plans and procedures, contacts lists, or any of the other sensitive materials attackers seek out in collaboration and file-sharing.

ArmorText enables organizations to enforce a segregation of duties between admins and reviewers, securing audit trails against unauthorized access, including an option to require multiple parties to come together before the review of retained end-to-end encrypted archives.. Legal counsel and compliance officers are assured that communications regarding security events are handled with the necessary level of confidentiality and adherence to compliance standards.

Moreover, ArmorText facilitates a seamless transition from SecOps (Left of Bang) to Incident Response (Right of Bang). When a security breach is officially declared, the swift and effective transition from routine security operations to focused incident response is critical. ArmorText facilitates this transition smoothly, providing robust out-of-band communication capabilities for maintaining operational continuity while under attack.

With its ability to operate independently of compromised networks, ArmorText allows teams to continue their communications and collaborations securely, ensuring that the details of the incident response strategies are shielded from prying eyes. This not only protects sensitive information but also prevents adversaries from gaining insights into incident response activities, thus safeguarding the integrity of their remediation efforts.

Forrester’s Recognition of ArmorText for SecOps

We believe ArmorText’s unique vision for SecOps is apparent in Forrester’s assessment that states it “outclasses for SecOps, incident response, and threat-intel-sharing use cases.”

Further underscoring this point, not only is ArmorText the only Leader identified as “purpose-built for out-of-band collaboration to meet the unique needs of security operations (SecOps) teams” in The Forrester Wave™: Secure Communications Solutions, Q3 2024, we are the only vendor identified as such in the entire report.