Cyber Threat Intelligence

Threat Intelligence is data collected and analyzed by an organization in order to understand a cyber threat’s motives and attack behaviors. Threat Intelligence enables defenders to make faster, more informed security decisions and change their behavior from reactive to proactive in the fight against breaches.

These organizations are increasingly recognizing the value of threat intelligence, with 72 percent planning to increase intelligence spending in upcoming quarters. However, there is a difference between recognizing value and receiving value.

Most organizations today are focusing their intelligence efforts on only the most basic use cases, such as integrating intelligence feeds with existing IPS, firewalls, and SIEMs — without taking full advantage of the insights that intelligence can offer.

Companies that stick to this basic level of threat intelligence are missing out on real advantages that could significantly strengthen their security postures.

Why is Threat Intelligence Important?

In the world of cybersecurity, advanced persistent threats (APTs) and defenders are constantly trying to outmaneuver each other. Organizations want to know the adversary’s next moves so they can proactively tailor their defenses and preempt future attacks.

To support proactive and predictive cybersecurity operations, security teams need knowledge. CTI provides that knowledge by shedding light on the unknown and enabling organizations to make better security decisions.

One of the primary benefits of threat intelligence is that it helps security professionals better understand the adversary’s decision-making process. For example, if you know which vulnerabilities an adversary is exploiting, you can choose the technologies and patching activities that will best mitigate exposure to those vulnerabilities.

Along the same lines, threat intelligence reveals adversarial motives. When you understand what drives threat actors to perform certain behaviors, you can monitor for advanced indication and warning of potential attacks.

Furthermore, cyber security intelligence helps security teams understand the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that the adversary leverages. This understanding can be used to enhance threat monitoring, threat hunting, incident response, and a variety of other cybersecurity disciplines.

In addition to empowering cybersecurity stakeholders, threat intelligence can empower business stakeholders, such as executive boards, CISOs, CIOs and CTOs; to invest wisely, mitigate risk, become more efficient and make faster decisions. 

A Cyber Attack is Preventable

Despite the prevalence of cyber attacks, Check Point data suggests that 99 percent of enterprises are not effectively protected. However, a cyber attack is preventable. The key to cyber defense is an end-to-end cyber security architecture that is multilayered and spans all networks, endpoint and mobile devices, and cloud. With the right architecture, you can consolidate management of multiple security layers, control policy through a single pane of glass. This lets you correlate events across all network environments, cloud services, and mobile infrastructures.

In addition to architecture, Check Point recommends these key measures to prevent cyber attacks:

·         Maintain security hygiene

·         Choose prevention over detection

·         Cover all attack vectors

·         Implement the most advanced technologies

·         Keep your threat intelligence up to date

5 Reasons Why You Need 24×7 Cyber Security Monitoring

Continuous or 24×7 cybersecurity monitoring through an experienced security services provider can drastically improve your threat alerts and help you spend more time on your security strategies. Here are five solid reasons you should consider 24×7 cyber security monitoring in the year ahead.

The Cybersecurity Landscape Has Changed Drastically

Organizations face a troubling threat landscape like never before. Global cybercrime is predicted to reach more than $2.1 trillion in 2019. You hear about new massive data breach almost monthly. The top enterprise organizations are having a tough time keeping up with the influx of threats hitting their security teams every day.  

Small and mid-size businesses are not exempt either. In fact, SMBs are the next target for cybercriminals as enterprise organizations direct more investment into cybersecurity defenses. Both enterprise and SMBs are facing an onslaught of challenges not to mention a lack of internal resources and a market for skilled cybersecurity professionals to manage everything.

Having a security partner that can monitor your environment on a 24x7x365 basis is where the market is headed. Gartner predicts that security outsourcing will be a major cybersecurity investment category in the years ahead.

Stringent Compliance & Regulatory Requirements

This year, security leaders are focused on addressing new compliance and regulatory requirements that could cost them millions in fines and penalties for non-compliance. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is among the first and most pressing new global regulation efforts to affect multinational organizations and businesses processing EU subject data. Not to mention, the United States is currently working a new bill called the Data Security and Breach Notification Act. A first-ever Federal regulation that will penalize companies that are hacked.

Nearly every country is now taking consumer data privacy and protection more seriously by introducing new legislation to hold organizations accountable. It becomes critically important that your company takes measures to reduce data compromise and put in the security controls to safeguard consumer data. That’s why continuous network and security monitoring from an experienced provider is the preferred choice for many organizations.

How using automation eases continuous monitoring burdens

Adding new technologies can increase risk, but they can also help mitigate them. Automated tools bring together a multitude of alerts into a single location and prioritize them for your staff.

NETWORK MONITORING

Protecting networks requires external insight into weaknesses. Automated tools scan networks from the outside to detect misconfigured firewalls and other control failures.

WEB APPLICATION MONITORING

Many SaaS applications require web browsers for access. Unfortunately, the same threats that plague consumer websites also affect these applications. Cross-site scripting, a primary vulnerability, infects computers with malicious code that collects login information. Thus, a misconfigured web application that either allows customers to login into a company’s account or a web application the company uses can lead to a data breach. Automated network security monitoring tools scan web applications for potential weaknesses that can leave the organization open to these kinds of attacks.

SECURITY PATCHING

Automated tools also scan systems, networks, applications, and devices for commonly known vulnerabilities (CVEs). CVEs are the reason that security patch updates exist. When a company such as Microsoft or Apple recognize a weakness in their operating systems, they send out the patch notifications. This notice makes the vulnerability public and allows cybercriminals to find ways to use it to obtain unauthorized access. Automated tools scan for CVEs to ensure that companies are managing their security patch updates in a timely manner.

3 Benefits of Cyber Security Monitoring Services

Cyber security monitoring is essential to ensure that your system is always available and is working efficiently. However, many small businesses do not have the time or resources to hire additional IT employees to monitor a network at all times.

Failure to monitor a network exposes your business to significant security threats and increases the chance of experiencing many technical issues in the workplace. A managed security services company can help you avoid many of these problems by providing around the clock network monitoring services at a fixed price each month.

Interested in learning more? Here are the top three reasons to consider network monitoring services for your small company.

#1 Reduces Downtime

One of the main advantages of cyber security monitoring services is that it is an excellent way to reduce downtime for your company. A full-functioning network is essential for day-to-day business operations and managed security services provider will ensure that everything is working at an optimal level by continually testing it on a frequent basis.

These preventative monitoring services will also repair and make any improvements to your network to minimize the chance of downtime that can result in significant financial costs for your company.

#2 Increases Productivity of Employees

An added benefit of cyber security monitoring services is that it is an effective way to increase the productivity levels of each employee.

For example, a managed security service provider will handle all of the technical duties involving a network, which allows employees to better concentrate on their core job tasks. Improving network performance is a top priority for an IT service provider, as this will enable employees to complete their job duties quicker and work much more efficiently.

#3 Limits Damage of Cyber Attacks

Cyber-attacks can devastate the reputation of any small business and can also cause significant data breaches. Many of these cyber threats focus on penetrating the network to steal valuable information and wreak havoc on the entire operating system.

However, you can limit the damage of cyber-attacks by partnering with a managed service provider that offers cyber security monitoring services. Any cyber security organization will automatically detect any unusual activity within your network and prevent a cyber threat from spreading to other areas and causing widespread damage.

The Challenges of In-House Security Monitoring

Security monitoring tools generate a large volume of alerts. Sifting through these to identify genuine threats from false positives is highly resource-intensive and this can lead to important alerts being ignored.

Setting up a Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) to undertake 24/7 security monitoring is often cost-prohibitive. Rather than recruiting and training dedicated in-house experts and arming them with the latest technologies and intelligence, many organizations are instead opting for a specialist managed service.

Why is security monitoring important?

As the modern workplace becomes increasingly digitized, with BYOD and remote working on the rise, the traditional security perimeter is becoming blurred. Cyber threats are evolving to take advantage of new vulnerabilities that emerge daily.

With breaches now an operational reality, proactive detection is essential. While technology alone can block many common signature-based threats, a deeper level of cyber security monitoring is required to identify the latest sophisticated cyber threats, including the latest types of ransomware and memory-resident malware.

Continuous cyber security monitoring helps organizations to:

• Improve threat visibility
• Detect a broader range of threats
• Reduce incident response times from months to minutes
• Evaluate the performance of existing security controls
• Comply with industry and regulatory requirements

A DEFINITION OF THREAT MONITORING

A DEFINITION OF THREAT MONITORING

Threat monitoring refers to a type of solution or process dedicated to continuously monitoring across networks and/or endpoints for signs of security threats such as attempts at intrusions or data exfiltration. Threat monitoring gives technology professionals visibility into the network and the actions of the users who access it, enabling stronger data protection as well as preventing or lessening of the damages caused by breaches. Today companies employ independent contractors, remote workers, and staff who use their own devices for work, posing additional risk to the company’s data and sensitive information and driving the need for threat monitoring at enterprises.

HOW THREAT MONITORING WORKS

Threat monitoring involves continually analyzing and evaluating security data in order to identify cyber attacks and data breaches. Threat monitoring solutions collect and correlate information from network sensors and appliances as well as endpoint agents and other security technologies to identify patterns indicative of a potential threat or security incident. Once a threat is identified an alert is issued to the security team for mitigation or incident response.

THE BENEFITS OF THREAT MONITORING

Using threat monitoring enables organizations to identify previously undetected threats such as outsiders connecting to or exploring networks and compromised or unauthorized internal accounts. It can be difficult to detect these activities otherwise, but threat monitoring solutions correlate information about network and endpoint activity with contextual factors such as IP addresses, URLs, and file and application details to provide more accurate identification of anomalies indicative of threat activity.

Threat monitoring reduces insider threat risks and maximizes data protection capabilities. Organizations are in a better position to defend against insider and outsider threats when they have full visibility into data access and usage and can enforce data protection policies to prevent sensitive data loss. Specifically, threat monitoring brings several benefits by helping security professionals:

• Learn what is happening on networks, who is using them, and whether or not they are at risk
• Understand how well network usage aligns with policy requirements
• Meet the standards of regulatory compliance or business partner agreements that require monitoring of sensitive data types
• Find vulnerabilities in networks, applications, and security architecture and understand how to fix them