Cyber Threat Protection — It All Starts with Visibility

Just as animals use their senses to detect danger, cybersecurity
depends on sensors to identify signals in the computing environment
that may signal danger. The more highly tuned, diverse and
coordinated the senses, the more likely one is to detect important
signals that indicate danger.

This, however, can be a double-edged sword. Too many signals
with too little advanced signal processing just leads to a lot of
noise. The right, diverse set of signals with highly evolved signal
processing leads to survival. It therefore makes sense that broad
threat visibility across the IT environment is fundamental for
detecting cyberattacks. Cybersecurity company Cynet puts this in
perspective in a new eBook, The Guide for Threat Visibility for Lean IT
Security Teams – link to this^[1].

The Ongoing Problem of Limited Threat Visibility

The complexity of today’s IT environments has made it
exceedingly difficult to protect. The defensive perimeter has
expanded with an expanded remote workforce, increasing SaaS and
Cloud workloads and more liberal third-party access. The IT
environment is so big and complex, and ever-changing, that
monitoring what’s happening is almost imporssible.

This complexity is not lost on cybercriminals that are drooling
over the expanding set of profitable opportunities to exploit,
increasing the creation of new and unanticipated attack vectors.
Because most security technologies excel at stopping known threats,
the escalating number of new threats means more attacks are
undetected.

The patchwork of security technologies strewn across the IT
environment allow security practitioners to see some part of the
attack surface, but certainly not all. Moreover, disconnected
defenses cannot provide a complete and accurate assessment of the
threat landscape. Rather than better focus, the hodgepodge of
security technologies increases noise.

The bottom line is that poor visibility leads to inadequate
defenses, overworked security teams and increasing costs. Improving
threat visibility is the first step to improving all aspects of
cybersecurity.

The Three Keys for Threat Visibility

If attaining full threat visibility were easy, we wouldn’t be
discussing it. Up until recently, achieving comprehensive
visibility was very expensive, overly complex and based on a very
large and highly skilled security team. Today, achieving full
threat visibility is accessible to even the leanest IT security
teams by using the right approach. See the Cynet eBook [link] for a
more detailed explanation.

Key Technologies for Threat Visibility

While more technologies may seem better, the key is choosing the
right set of technologies that cover the most important parts of
the IT environment. These include:

• NGAV – Fundamental endpoint protection based on known bad
  signatures and behaviors.
• EDR – To detect and prevent more complex endpoint threats that
  bypass NGAV solutions.
• NDR – To detect threats that have made their way into the
  network and so-called lateral movement.
• UBA – To detect unusual activity that could signal stolen
  credentials, a rogue insider, or bots.
• Deception – To uncover intrusions that have bypassed other
  detection technologies
• SIEM – To mine the extensive log data generated by IT
  systems.
• SOAR – To automate and speed up threat mitigation efforts.

Integrate Everything for a 360 Degree View

Multiple detection and prevention tools, as listed above, are
required to begin to see across the entire IT environment.
Implemented as stand-alone components, however, will still leave
huge gaps in visibility. It also leads to so-called alert overload
as each technology independently streams a steady flow of alerts
that tend to overwhelm security teams.

Newer XDR solutions are built to integrate real-time signals
from multiple points of telemetry on a single platform. Bringing
together NGAV, EDR, UBA, NDR and Deception under one umbrella
extends the range and resolution of threat visibility. XDR can
expose attacks from every direction no matter what evasive measures
they take.

Automate Response Actions to Improve
Reflexes

Seeing a threat is one thing. Quickly and appropriately reacting
to it is another. With improved threat visibility and accuracy, IT
security teams – and especially lean teams – will need to react
quickly to thwart identified threats.

Automation improves both speed and scale more than an army of
security pros could–so long as it is integrated within the XDR.
When both work together, all the signals and data collected by the
constituent parts of the XDR feed into the automation engine to
give it an enhanced understanding. That enables the automation to
investigate the attack faster to determine its root cause and full
impact. Then, based on what’s known about the attack, automation
can orchestrate a playbook recommended for that attack, taking
specific steps to neutralize the threat and mitigate the
damage.

Final Thoughts

Security stack need not continue to expand. Consolidating and
integrating the key tools with emerging XDR technology enhances
threat visibility, along with everything else. XDR allows any
security team, even the leanest and greenest, to slash the false
alarms, see the stealthiest attacks earlier and then automatically
and instantly do something about it.

Download the guide here^[2]