E-mail and data security specialist Mimecast has announced the acquisition of Segasec, a provider of digital threat protection.

The company says in a statement that Segasec technology will help its customers to better defend against attacks that leverage fake Web sites and domains for credential harvesting of their customers, employees, partners, and third party vendors within their supply chains.

The news comes amid predictions that 2020 will see a new level of cyber-attacks – with fake audio-visuals being forecast to be increasingly used by criminals as a social engineering tactic to extort money from companies and individuals.

Mimecast says hackers are using sophisticated techniques to target organisations of all sizes and in all industries by using their brands as bait to launch attacks.

"With the acquisition of Segasec, Mimecast can provide brand exploit protection using machine learning to identify potential hackers at the earliest stages of an attack. The solution also is engineered to provide a way to actively monitor, manage, block and take down phishing scams or impersonation attempts on the Web," reads the statement.

Peter Bauer, CEO at Mimecast, says: "Every brand is vulnerable to attacks that abuse and threaten the trust that employees, customers, partners and 3rd party vendors have placed in them.

"Segasec will allow our customers to take a proactive approach to identifying -- and even potentially preventing -- attacks that imitate their brands using domains they don't own, while also offering the visibility required to understand how their brands are being misused for malicious intent."

He explains further: "Segasec's solutions strongly complement our recent acquisition of DMARC Analyzer, which simplifies the process of protecting against abuse of domains customers do own and continues to strengthen our Email Security 3.0 approach."

E-mail security 3.0

"As such, brand exploitation has been on the rise, as cyber criminals co-opt the brands we depend on and violate our trust. The powerful combination of Mimecast and Segasec will help customers better protect their brands, customers and other external stakeholders, as well as their own employees."