Threat detection and response is the practice of identifying any malicious activity that could compromise the network. It also involves composing a proper response to mitigate or neutralize the threat before it can exploit any present vulnerabilities.
Within the context of an organization’s security program, the concept of “threat detection” is multifaceted. Even the best security programs must plan for worst-case scenarios: when someone or something has slipped past their defensive and preventative technologies and becomes a threat.
Detection and response is where people join forces with technology to address a breach. A strong threat detection and response program combines people, processes, and technology to recognize signs of a breach as early as possible and take appropriate actions.
Detecting Threats
When it comes to detecting and mitigating threats, speed is crucial. Security programs must be able to detect threats quickly and efficiently so attackers don’t have enough time to root around in sensitive data. A business’s defensive programs can ideally stop a majority of previously seen threats, meaning they should know how to fight them.
These threats are considered “known” threats. However, there are additional “unknown” threats that an organization aims to detect. This means the organization hasn’t encountered them before, perhaps because the attacker is using new methods or technologies.
Known threats can sometimes slip past even the best defensive measures, which is why most security organizations actively look for both known and unknown threats in their environment.
Threat Detection and Response
Threat detection and response is a cybersecurity tool designed to identify and prevent cyber threats. It can generally stop known threats, unknown threats and highly evasive malware that standard malware protection can miss. Understanding how each piece of threat detection and response works is the first step to finding the right tool for your business.
What Is Threat Detection?
Threat detection is the process of analyzing a security ecosystem at the holistic level to find malicious users, abnormal activity, and anything that could compromise a network. Threat detection is built on threat intelligence, which involves tools that are strategic, tactical and operational.
Highly evasive cyber threats are the main focus of threat detection and response tools.
What Is Threat Response?
Threat response consists of the mitigation efforts used to neutralize and prevent cyber threats before they create vulnerabilities. These efforts monitor systems in real-time and create alerts when detecting cyber threats and malicious behavior.
Threat response is also built on threat intelligence.
How Threat Detection Works
With active monitoring from managed detection and response, threat detection can spot known and unknown threats using threat intelligence. Once it identifies a threat, the threat response creates alerts or takes other action to prevent an attacker from accessing systems or sensitive data.
A good threat detection and response tool can stop a variety of cyber threats.
Cyber Threats
Cyber threats can be separated into common cyber threats and advanced persistent threats. While a good threat detection and response tool should be effective against multiple types of cyber threats, most are built with highly evasive threats as a priority.
Common Cyber Threats
Common cyber threats include ransomware, malware, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and phishing. These kinds of attacks often come from outside a business, but they can also be used by an insider threat. An insider in this context is commonly a current or former employee with intimate knowledge of the business.
Ransomware — software designed to encrypt files and block access until a business pays money — is the most prevalent of the common cyber threats.
Advanced Persistent Threats
Advanced persistent threats are attack campaigns where attackers establish a presence on a network to gain access over the long term. The goals of these attackers range from hacktivism to cyber espionage and financial gain. These cyber threats are designed to infiltrate, insert malware and gather credentials, then exfiltrate without detection.
One example was the 2015 data breach of more than four million U.S. government personnel records by the suspected hacker group DEEP PANDA.
Advanced Types of Threats
There are a wide variety of threats that organizations must face in today’s rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape. Some of the most common types of threats include:
Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)
Advanced Persistent Threats or APTs are a type of cyber threat where an unauthorized user gains access to a network and stays undetected for a long time. This type of threat is often used to steal data over a prolonged period or to cause continuous damage to the targeted organization. APTs are typically orchestrated by groups that have significant resources and are highly skilled in exploiting vulnerabilities in systems.
APTs are particularly dangerous because they employ a wide range of tactics to gain entry, remain hidden, and extract valuable information. They often involve complex malware and sophisticated evasion techniques that can bypass traditional security measures and remain undetected for extended periods.
Zero-Day Exploits
Zero-day exploits refer to a cyber threat where a hacker exploits a software vulnerability before the vulnerability becomes generally known. There are no specific defenses in place because the software’s creators are unaware of the vulnerability until the attack occurs.
These attacks are particularly dangerous because they take advantage of the time gap between the discovery of a vulnerability and the release of a patch to fix it. This gives hackers an opportunity to exploit the vulnerability and potentially gain access to sensitive data or critical systems.
IoT Vulnerabilities
The Internet of Things (IoT) – a network of interconnected devices – presents a new frontier for cyber threats. These devices, ranging from smart home appliances to industrial control systems, are often not designed with security in mind, making them easy targets for cybercriminals.
IoT vulnerabilities can result in the compromise of personal data, disruption of services, and even physical harm. The increasing reliance on IoT devices in both personal and business contexts makes addressing these vulnerabilities a critical issue.
Fileless Malware
Fileless malware is a type of cyber threat that operates in the computer’s memory rather than on the hard drive. This makes it extremely difficult to detect and remove, as traditional antivirus software typically scans the hard drive for malicious files.
This type of malware is particularly dangerous because it can easily bypass traditional security measures. It can also persist on a system even after a reboot, making it a significant threat to organizations.
Phishing and Social Engineering 2.0
Phishing and social engineering attacks have evolved significantly in recent years. Cybercriminals are now using more sophisticated tactics, such as spear phishing and whaling, to trick individuals into revealing sensitive information or performing actions that compromise security.
These attacks often involve carefully crafted emails or messages that appear to come from trusted sources. They can lead to significant financial loss, data breaches, and damage to an organization’s reputation.
Deepfakes and Information Manipulation
Deepfakes, or artificially created, realistic images or videos, represent a new form of cyber threat. They can be used to manipulate information, spread disinformation, and cause harm to individuals or organizations.
Deepfakes have the potential to undermine trust in digital content, manipulate public opinion, and even influence political outcomes. They pose a serious challenge to organizations and individuals alike, as they can be difficult to detect and counter.
AI-Powered Attacks
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not only being used to boost security but also to enhance cyber threats. AI-powered attacks can analyze vast amounts of data, learn from previous attacks, and automate tasks, making them more efficient and harder to detect.
AI-powered attacks can adapt to changes in security measures, identify vulnerabilities faster, and execute attacks at a scale and speed that humans cannot match. This makes them a grave threat to organizations and underscores the need for proactive security measures.
Threat Detection And Mitigation Methods
Early detection and intervention is the goal of all threat detection methods. When network breaches happen, uncovering them quickly can help security teams minimize data loss and reduce damage. Here are four popular threat detection methods and how they work.
Threat intelligence
Cyber threat intelligence is the process of identifying, analyzing, and understanding threats that have targeted the organization in the past, are currently attempting to gain unauthorized access, and are likely to do so in the future. Analysts can use any threat intelligence from within their own organization, or from security groups that post online to apply to their own data.
For example, if a breach happened to another organization, they can post those indicators of compromise (IOCs) online for anybody to use and potentially uncover similar patterns in their own security data. Similar to the way governments gather data on a foreign adversary’s attempts to breach their defenses, threat detection can help bolster defenses and neutralize ongoing security threats.
Threat intelligence seeks to understand the following:
- The methods attackers are using
- Vulnerabilities in the company’s network, systems, and applications
- The identity of attackers seeking to compromise networks
This information helps bolster cybersecurity readiness and threat mitigation efforts while keeping business leaders and stakeholders informed about potential risks and consequences if bad actors are successful.
User and attacker behavior analytics
Analyzing the behavioral patterns of internal users can help threat hunters flag deviations that may indicate a user’s credentials have been compromised. This data could include things such as the types of information users access regularly, what times of day each user is typically active in the network, and where users are working.
For example, a top-level corporate executive who typically works regular business hours from a home office in Lagos is unlikely to log in to the corporate network at 2:30 a.m. in Abuja. By establishing a baseline for what normal behavior looks like, security analysts are better able to spot anomalies that require further scrutiny.
Intruder traps
An intruder trap is a threat detection technique that acts like a sting operation. It is designed to lure hackers out of the shadows so cybersecurity teams can detect their presence. Like a bee to honey, some targets are just too sweet for bad actors to ignore.
Teams set traps by creating faux targets such as areas that appear to contain network services or inadequately protected credentials that look like they could be used to access areas containing sensitive data. Once accessed, these intruder traps act as a tripwire, alerting security teams that someone is actively probing the system and intervention is needed.
Threat hunting
Threat hunting is an overtly proactive approach to threat detection where security analysts actively look for impending threats or signs that intruders have already gained access to key systems.
By searching the organization’s network, endpoints, and security technology, threat hunters seek to uncover intruders who have successfully evaded current cyber defenses.
Threat Detection Technologies
Threat detection tools and techniques are constantly evolving to meet ever-changing threats to network and data security. While the security needs of every organization are unique, these threat detection technologies belong in every organization’s cybersecurity arsenal.
Security event detection technology
By bringing data together across an organization’s entire network, security event technology pulls events including authentication, network access, and logs from critical systems into one place. This simplifies tasks such as comparing this systemwide log data against potential issues. It uses a threat database feed to more efficiently analyze event logs, and root out probable cyber threats.
Security event technology enables security analysts to gain a complete view of all their endpoints, including firewalls, IDS/IPS devices and apps, servers, switches, OS logs, routers, and other applications.
Network threat technology
Network threat technology monitors traffic within an organization’s network, in between other trusted networks, and on the internet to actively scan for suspicious activities that may indicate the presence of malicious activity. This technology reduces response time for threat detection and reaction, making it a critical tool for countering the increasing number of systemwide attacks by hackers.
Endpoint threat technology
Endpoint threat detection and response is an endpoint security solution. It implements continuous monitoring and collection of endpoint data with rules-based automated response and analysis capabilities. This technology makes it possible to monitor and collect activity data in real-time from endpoints such as user machines that could indicate the presence of a potential threat.
Armed with this data, teams can quickly identify threat patterns. They can also generate an automatic response that removes or contains threats, and notify security personnel for further intervention.
Endpoint threat detection technology also provides behavioral or forensic information to aid in investigating identified threats.
Security data lake implementation
Data lakes are a subset of a data warehouse, with the flexibility to support both unstructured and semi-structured data in native formats. A security data lake makes it possible to stream all of an organization’s reconnaissance data. This eliminates the burdensome task of collecting logs.
This technology removes the cost and scalability limitations of storing security data in the security information and management (SIEM) tool.
A security data lake can allow security analysts to store many years’ worth of historical data. This makes it easy to determine if a flagged specific pattern is typical or an anomaly that warrants further investigation.
How to Identify and Respond to Cyber Threats
Effective threat detection depends on the maturity of your cybersecurity operation and the tools at your disposal. The more your environment grows, the greater the need for automated solutions that can help with advanced threat detection.
Sophisticated cybercriminals targeting your organization are likely to be evasive and difficult to identify. For instance, you can never be certain if a hacker group or state-sponsored attacker has become interested in your organization. This has been the reason for many high-profile breaches.
Security operations centers (SOCs) and security teams can detect and respond to cyber threats before they become active and affect the organization. Even so, you should still have an incident response plan in place for when an incident occurs. This allows your team to isolate, respond to, and bounce back from cybersecurity incidents.
To arrange a timely and appropriate response, SOC teams must understand the particular cyber threat. Using frameworks such as MITRE ATT&CK can assist security teams with their understanding of adversaries and how they work. It makes threat response and detection faster.
SOC analysts can also gain a significant advantage from using advanced tools. This includes behavioral analytics (UBA) and threat-hunting capabilities. These can help with proactive threat detection.
Threat Detection and Prevention Best Practices
Risk Assessment
The first step in threat detection and prevention is to conduct a thorough risk assessment. This process involves identifying potential risks, vulnerabilities, and threats that could impact the organization’s information systems. This includes identifying potential attack vectors, assessing the likelihood of a breach, and evaluating the potential impact on the organization.
After identifying the risks, it’s essential to analyze and prioritize them based on their potential impact and likelihood of occurrence. This will help organizations focus their resources on addressing the most significant threats and vulnerabilities first.
Prioritizing risks can be done using various methods, such as quantitative risk assessments, qualitative analysis, or a combination of both.
Implement a Security Framework
A security framework is a set of guidelines and best practices designed to help organizations establish and maintain a robust security posture. There are several well-known frameworks available, such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, ISO/IEC 27001, and the CIS Critical Security Controls. Organizations should choose a framework that aligns with their specific needs, industry regulations, and compliance requirements.
While security frameworks provide a solid foundation for building a secure environment, it’s essential to customize them based on the organization’s unique needs and risk profile. This may involve adapting the framework’s guidelines to suit the organization’s size, industry, and specific threats or vulnerabilities.
Customizing the framework will help ensure it is effective in addressing the organization’s unique security challenges.
Incident Response Plan
It is crucial to develop an incident response plan for effective threat detection and prevention. An incident response plan outlines the steps an organization should take in the event of a security incident. This includes who should be notified, what actions should be taken, and how the incident will be investigated and resolved.
Developing an incident response plan in advance will help organizations respond quickly and effectively to security incidents. This will minimize the potential impact on their systems and data.
The development of an incident response plan is not a one-time task. Organizations should regularly test and update their incident response plan to ensure it remains effective in addressing new and emerging threats. Regularly testing the incident response plan through tabletop exercises or simulated incidents will help organizations identify areas where the plan may need to be updated or revised.
Security Awareness Training
Providing security awareness training to employees is an essential component of threat detection and prevention best practices. Security awareness training educates employees on cybersecurity best practices. These include how to identify and report potential security incidents, how to create strong passwords, and how to avoid phishing scams.
Providing regular training will ensure employees are aware of the latest threats and best practices for protecting the organization’s systems and data.
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