Case Study: Investment firm strengthens email security and prevents account takeovers with Material Security

Investment firm - Customer Case Study

First Round Capital, an investment firm, needed a way to protect highly sensitive client and internal communications without disrupting a lean, user-friendly IT environment. The firm faced risks from account takeovers, email-based password resets, and sophisticated phishing attacks, while also needing to retain email for business and compliance purposes. Material Security helped address these challenges by securing email data and reducing the risk of compromise.

Using Material Security’s email security and identity protection features, First Round Capital added an extra authorization step for high-risk password reset messages, redacted sensitive archived emails, and enabled employee-reported phishing to protect the whole company. The firm also used Material Security risk analytics to identify that 82% of email accounts contained sensitive messages, with an average of 2,200 sensitive emails per account, allowing targeted protections by team. As a result, First Round Capital improved resilience against email compromise, limited potential exposure from a breach, and maintained productivity with minimal IT overhead.