Author: Lara Antonian

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” If he were still with us today, I’d wager that Mr. Dickens would have included ‘email’ somewhere in the famous words that follow this opening paragraph found in 'A Tale of Two Cities'.

For all the benefits ‘le courriel’ offers, it’s also the bedrock of cybercriminal activity. While only 2.9% of employees may actually click on a phishing link, when you consider the 300+ billion emails sent daily, that's still a staggering statistic. 

Aiming to stay one step ahead of these bad actors is Armenian-founded EasyDMARC, which has raised $2.3 million in a seed funding round led by the CEE, CIS, and Baltics region specialist Acrobator Ventures. The fresh filling of the inbox is expected to aid the company in expanding its global reach as it continues to develop more headache-inducing problems for cyber criminals and better sleeping patterns for IT managers.

At its core, EasyDMARC is the first line of defense for corporate email infrastructures. The cloud-based system specifically monitors any and all email-based threats including phishing, spoofing, and spam, and puts a halt to any financial, data, and ultimately, customer loss.

Like many a startup, EasyDMARC’s genesis can be found in personal experience. While working as an information security consultant back in 2016, Co-founder and CEO Gerasim Hovhannisyan, was brought in to investigate a severe email phishing attack that resulted in a financial fleecing of his client. While a number of DMARC protocol solutions were readily available, London's Red Sift, specifically its OnDMARC product, for example, Hovhannisyan concluded they were all a bit too complex for the "average" business to implement.

And thus, the Easy in EasyDMARC.

According to the company, since 2017 it has prevented over 82 million cybersecurity attacks, is currently analysing more than 9 billion data points per month, and is trusted by the likes of Ferrari, Panasonic, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, SimilarWeb, and 30,000+ other institutions in over 130 countries around the globe.

“Cyberattacks have an increasing toll on our lives privately, commercially, and at the government level,” commented Acrobator Ventures’ Joachim Laqueur. “With over 300 billion emails sent every day, email is the most exposed security lapse. DMARC puts a layer of security in place but is hard to implement well. Growing at almost 3x the market growth rate, this team from Armenia is doing something special.”

In addition to Acrobator Ventures lead, EasyDMARC’s $2.3 million seed round saw the participation of Formula VC. The company is also backed by Crosspring at the pre-seed level.

https://tech.eu/2022/08/09/armenia-s-easydmarc-secures-2-3-million-in-seed-round-cybercriminals-weep/

Russia continues to demonstrate its impotence in the global arena. Recent clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh have clearly shown that the Kremlin will hardly be able to continue playing the role of a regional arbiter in the South Caucasus.

On August 3, clashes between Armenian forces and the Azerbaijani Army broke out near the strategically important Lachin Corridor in Nagorno-Karabakh. That tiny strip of land connects Nagorno-Karabakh – internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, although it has been under Armenian control for almost 30 years – to Armenia through Azerbaijani-held territory. The Lachin Corridor, as well as other Armenian-controlled areas, has been under the supervision of Russian peacekeepers since 2020. They have been deployed there following the 44-day war that resulted in Azerbaijan’s victory. During the conflict, Baku managed to restore its sovereignty over significant portions of Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as surrounding areas. Some territories, however, including Lachin and Stepanakert, also known as as Khankendi – the de facto capital and the largest city of the self-proclaimed Armenia-backed Republic of Artsakh – remain under Armenian control to this day.

Although Yerevan recently announced that it will withdraw all remaining military units from Nagorno-Karabakh by September, Baku seems to be attempting to speed up the process and establish full control over the mountainous region as soon as possible. Russia, Armenia’s nominal ally in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), has accused Azerbaijan of violating the 2020 ceasefire deal, which is something that Baku strongly denies. According to Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, the reason for the recent tension is “the presence of illegal Armenian armed troops in the territories of Azerbaijan and provocations instigated by them”.

Despite the presence of the Russian troops, Azerbaijani Armed Forces have launched a counter operation and seized a number of important heights near the Lachin Corridor. Such an action has demonstrated that the Russian peacekeepers cannot prevent a potential large-scale conflict. Indeed, if another war in Nagorno-Karabakh eventually breaks out, some 2,000 Russian troops in the region will play the role of sitting ducks. Azerbaijani actions have shown that Baku, strongly backed by Turkey, Israel and Pakistan, does not seem to hesitate from a potential conflict with Russia. The Azeri leaders are quite aware that Moscow, preoccupied with its military fiasco in Ukraine, cannot fight two wars at the same time, and that the Kremlin will seek to avoid an escalation in the region by all means.

That is why Baku is expected to continue pressuring Yerevan to withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh. Sporadic local clashes could be a method of pressure, and it is entirely possible that Azerbaijani forces will soon seize more strategically important heights and villages. Armenia, on the other hand, cannot count on Moscow’s concrete support. If the situation in the region escalates, the Kremlin will almost certainly keep accusing Azerbaijan of violating the ceasefire deal and call on both sides to “keep restraint”. But Russian peacekeepers will be unlikely to take any practical steps to protect the local Armenians.

A new round of full-fledged hostilities will undoubtedly mark the end of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh

Thus, a new round of full-fledged hostilities will undoubtedly mark the end of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh. Under the current geopolitical circumstances Armenia may be able to delay, but not to prevent the return of Nagorno-Karabakh under Baku’s jurisdiction. As Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan recently stressed, questions arise in Armenian society over the Russian peacekeeping operation in Nagorno-Karabakh. In other words, Yerevan understands that Russia is not in a position to help Armenia, which is why Pashinyan said on August 4 that it is necessary to “endow the peacekeeping mission with a wider international mandate”. But since Azerbaijan has the upper hand over Armenia, it is extremely unlikely that Baku, unless seriously pressured by the West, will agree to internationalize the Karabakh conflict.

Pashinyan will, therefore, likely try to find a way to de facto give up Armenia’s aspirations over Nagorno-Karabakh, but at the same time to save face. Yerevan may also attempt to distance itself from the Kremlin and develop close ties with the West, hoping that such a flip-flop will help Armenia to preserve control over Artsakh (the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh). However, given that energy-rich Azerbaijan recently signed a very important gas deal with the European Union, it is not very probable that the West will support Armenian ambitions in the region.

Accordingly, the Armenia-backed unrecognized Republic of Artsakh could prove to be a “collateral damage” of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Kremlin, for its part, continues to struggle to preserve the South Caucasus in its geopolitical orbit, although developments on the ground indicate that neither Baku nor Yerevan see Moscow as the primary mediator in their disputes.

According to reports in the Azerbaijani media, Armenia shelled Azerbaijani positions near the war-torn Karabakh region over the weekend. The two former Soviet republics have been fighting over this area for almost thirty years. This time, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry accused Armenia of attacking Azerbaijani military positions near Lachin and Kalbajar. And later, the Azerbaijani military retaliated.

The Second Karabakh War ended with a cease-fire agreement in 2020, but there continue to be flare-ups between the two countries, and those have worsened since the start of the war in Ukraine. The ceasefire was brokered by Russia and used to be monitored by a Russian peacekeeping force. But since the war in Ukraine began, Russia has not been paying attention to events in Karabakh, which encourages flare-ups.