Egress Acquires Aquilai to Defend Organizations Against Rising Tide of Targeted Phishing Attacks

Acquisition expands Egress Intelligent Email Security to eliminate all insider risk on email, including zero-day phishing exploits.

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Egress, the leading provider of human layer security, today announced it has acquired Aquilai, an anti-phishing provider with machine learning and natural language processing technology that stops all targeted email attacks, including business email compromise (BEC), spear phishing and impersonation attempts. The acquisition of Aquilai strengthens the Egress Intelligent Email Security platform, which solves every organization’s most complex cybersecurity challenge: insider risk.

The powerful combination of Egress and Aquilai will provide customers with protection against all inbound cyberattacks targeting employees and real-time outbound email security for shared data, including inadvertent data loss and email encryption. With the increased volume and sophistication of targeted phishing attacks, security leaders need an intelligent, non-disruptive email security solution that detects multi-vector exploits and thwarts zero-day attacks. Additionally, seamless integration with Microsoft Outlook will enable organizations to effectively defend against email data loss and the increasing number of attacks targeting the 365 platform.

The acquisition will go into immediate effect with the launch of Egress Defend, which incorporates Aquilai’s anti-phishing technology and the following key capabilities:

• Machine learning and natural language to detect all phishing attacks. Egress Defend detects and mitigates all zero day phishing attacks, including advanced threats such as BEC and brand forgery, CEO fraud and impersonation attempts, and spear phishing.
• Content and context analysis for inbound email traffic. Egress Defend detects BEC and social engineering attacks, including those utilizing open-source intelligence (OSINT), to provide enhanced security versus relationship-based solutions.
• Streamlined user engagement for enhanced cybersecurity awareness among employees. Egress Defend includes traffic light warnings and insight summaries to provide active learning to educate users about the threats they face.

The acquisition of Aquilai supports a year of rapid growth for Egress, following announcements made earlier in 2021 of key additions to its leadership team, new product enhancements and the opening of its first New York office, and continues Egress’ leadership of the human layer security technology category.

Today’s announcement will also see Aquilai’s CTO Jack Chapman join Egress as VP of Threat Intelligence. Chapman co-founded Aquilai in 2018 and oversaw the development of its anti-phishing solution. Egress CEO Tony Pepper comments: “Organizations face a daily onslaught of targeted attacks via email that are designed to exploit employees. By acquiring Aquilai, Egress will expand its protection over our customers’ human layer to ensure they can defend against targeted inbound attacks and outbound data loss as employees share content. I’m also personally delighted to welcome Jack Chapman as our new VP of Threat Intelligence and look forward to working with him to help our customers level-up in their fight against phishing.”

Chapman comments: “Aquilai is the perfect fit to advance Egress’ mission to secure the human layer, adding sophisticated anti-phishing capability to existing products that secure outbound content as it is shared by employees. I’m also delighted to be joining Egress as VP of Threat Intelligence to further accelerate the company’s high growth in EMEA and North America.”

As a result of the acquisition and launch of Egress Defend, the Aquilai Ajax brand will be retired from 1^st June 2021.

--- ENDS ---

About Egress

Our mission is to eliminate the greatest risk to every business – the insider threat. To achieve this Egress has built the world’s only Human Layer Security platform that empowers your people to remain secure while being highly productive.

Using patented contextual machine learning, Egress is trusted by the world's biggest brands to prevent human error and protect against malicious or reckless behavior on email without any administrative overhead. Funded by FTV Capital and Albion VC, Egress is headquartered in London with offices in Toronto and Boston.