The vast majority of breaches start with a single deceptive email. We implement rigorous cloud sandboxing. Suspicious PDF attachments or weaponized Excel macros are detonated safely inside an isolated cloud virtual machine analyzing their behavioral impact before the email is legally permitted to reach your staff.
Email Sandboxing and Detonation
We deploy Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 or Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection, both of which use cloud-based detonation chambers to detonate suspicious attachments and URLs before delivery. A weaponised Excel file containing an embedded macro dropper is opened inside an isolated Windows VM — if it attempts to download a payload or make external connections, the email is quarantined and the sender is flagged.
This process adds 30–90 seconds of delivery delay for suspicious emails, which is imperceptible to staff while blocking the primary delivery mechanism for ransomware groups targeting UAE financial services and real estate companies.
- Attachment detonation in isolated cloud VMs before inbox delivery
- Safe Links URL rewriting for real-time URL reputation checking on click
- Anti-phishing policies with impersonation protection for executive names
- DMARC, DKIM, and SPF enforcement to block spoofed sender domains
- Quarantine management with user self-service release for false positives
Spear-Phishing and BEC Protection
Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks — where attackers impersonate your CEO or CFO to authorise fraudulent wire transfers — are the highest-value attack vector in the UAE, with average losses exceeding AED 500,000 per incident. We configure executive impersonation protection rules that flag emails claiming to be from your leadership team but arriving from external domains, and we implement dual-approval workflows for financial transactions initiated by email.
We also conduct quarterly simulated phishing campaigns using Microsoft Attack Simulator, testing staff awareness and identifying the employees who need additional security awareness training before they become a real incident.
DMARC Enforcement and Domain Protection
Without DMARC in enforcement mode, anyone can send emails that appear to come from your company domain — a trivial technique used for supplier fraud and credential harvesting. We configure SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records with p=quarantine and progress to p=reject once legitimate mail flow is confirmed, preventing domain spoofing entirely. We also monitor for lookalike domains (nocko-uae.com, nockko.ae) that attackers register to impersonate your company in phishing campaigns.