Iterable Moves from Reactive to Proactive Email Security

Iterable’s technology creatively weaves data and measurement capabilities to deliver insights that improve customers’ digital experiences. Iterable’s employees are fundamentally onboard with using information, numbers, and analytics to validate actions. For Director of IT Allen Jeter, and IT Client Platform Engineer Nate Meir, who led the Material rollout, the thirst for insights extends to email security.

Iterable uses a wide range of Material’s products, including: Phishing Protection to effectively deputize their entire workforce in the perpetual fight against phishing, Identity Protection to secure account reset workflows, and Data Protection for Email to protect sensitive information within company mailboxes without hurting user productivity. When Allen first encountered Material, he was “blown away” by the visibility, clarity, and contextual relevance of each product feature: “Material is now the solution that I talk about most with enterprise security folks. I tell them: you should know that Material is the Coca Cola of email security."

“Material is now the solution that I talk about most with enterprise security folks. I tell them: you should know that Material is the Coca Cola of email security. We love this product and benefit from every feature of it,” said Allen.

Best of all, when taken in concert, the three features were able to “boost overall security and distribute the security burden across employees.”

Complete Email Security with a Single API Grant

After speaking with a few other providers, Iterable decided to give Material’s rollout the green light because the product was offering the most from a feature standpoint and expecting the least from an integration standpoint. Allen recounted the moment he asked Material what was needed from Iterable to deploy the product. The answer was a single API grant. And then boom: Material instantly added visibility and in-depth defense to every email account at Iterable.‍

“I was impressed with Material’s ability to surface tons of important data in one place that doesn’t exist together in any other tool”

“I was impressed with Material’s ability to surface tons of important data in one place that doesn’t exist together in any other tool,” said Allen. “Material’s product gives us the keys to the Ferrari with a single API key grant. We don't even have to service it. We love it,” he added.

Behind the scenes, Material sets up a single-tenant, public cloud instance exclusive to each customer. That way, Iterable benefits from an additional layer of proactive security while retaining full control over email data. Allen and Nate both found this integration approach unique in their dealings with IT and security vendors over the course of their respective careers. “We’ve had integrations and partnerships with other companies where I find myself writing code to make products work efficiently,” said Nate.‍

“With Material, we were able to immediately benefit from a product that provides complete email security without the need to reroute emails, move data out of our control, or disrupt employee workflows“

Optimized Phishing Response with End-User Participation

Iterable’s IT team often uses Material’s Message Search feature to swiftly search for, and remove, suspicious messages in real-time across all mailboxes. More importantly, with Phishing Protection, Iterable’s employees are able to take on a leading role in ensuring the company’s overall digital welfare.

It now takes just one individual to save the entire company from hacking doom by flagging an email as suspicious. Once a message is reported, Material searches the entire company’s email for similar messages and defangs all of them until the matter can be properly examined by Iterable’s IT team.‍

“Before, our end-users would receive a phishing email and flag it to our security team,” said Nate. “And then they’d wait and wait for one of us to take action. Since deploying Material’s Phishing Protection, we’ve saved a ton of time when it comes to phishing response—and now everyone at Iterable is armed to help.”

Allen noted that as soon as Material’s Phishing Protection feature was up and running, his team was able to drastically cut down overhead related to phishing investigations—effectively eliminating idle time between attack detection and resolution.

The Name of the Game: Proactive Protection

Most security products are fundamentally reactive—promising to alert teams after an attack occurs or a breach is detected. However, Nate and Allen agreed that the best security products operate in the background to proactively mitigate risks, remove threats, and protect users without getting in their way. It was these principles that attracted them to Material’s Data Protection for Email and Identity Protection features: “Identity Protection and Data Protection for Email help Iterable’s IT team lessen the surface area vulnerable to attacks and ensure Iterable’s employees avoid activity that—intentionally or unintentionally—funnels company data into the wrong hands,” Nate explained.

The two features allowed Iterable to effectively extend their broader zero-trust strategy to email: just because someone has the keys to an email account, doesn’t mean they should be able to perform highly privileged actions within the account. Data Protection for Email protects sensitive messages at rest and requires users to pass a quick challenge to access them. Identity Protection delivers password resets only after a user confirms it’s a legitimate attempt. In both cases, Iterable was able to use their existing Identity provider to add an additional layer of security to mailboxes—all without sacrificing user productivity.

“Identity Protection and Data Protection for Email help Iterable’s IT team lessen the surface area vulnerable to attacks and ensure Iterable’s employees avoid activity that—intentionally or unintentionally—funnels company data into the wrong hands,” Nate said.

Consistent Support Through Multi-Feature Rollout

While deployment went smoothly according to Allen and Nate, a small hurdle right out of the gate tested Material’s commitment to customer success and support. One of Iterable’s high-level employees had an unusual email setup that distanced them from the company’s standard technical stack. Instead of placing the burden on Allen and his IT team to force a change internally, Material’s support squad worked to create a secure workaround specific to that use case. The issue was resolved in a matter of days, not weeks—a first for Allen who has been in IT management for over a decade: "At the end of the deployment process, I was trying to figure out which was better: Material’s product or the support we received during the rollout and continue to benefit from today,” said Allen.

“At the end of the deployment process, I was trying to figure out which was better: Material’s product or the support we received during the rollout and continue to benefit from today,” said Allen.‍

Material’s support extends to every product feature, API integration, analytics deep-dive, and even some things beyond the product’s scope.

“Take a recent use case with our security awareness vendor: a third party that has nothing to do with Material,” said Allen. “The Material support team worked with us to share valuable data with the third party to help us get the most value out of their product. I think of Material as the unicorn of support models—you guys are going so far above and beyond for us.”

To explore what Material’s email security product suite and support capabilities can do for your enterprise, request a demo.