In today’s cyberworld, automation plays a critical role to improve the cybersecurity posture. Read on to know more about it…
A growing digital transformation projects has brought up crucial concerns that many Indian businesses are currently dealing with, such as an increase in cyberattacks. In just the first two months of this year, CERT-In documented over two lakh cyber security incidents in India. To effectively safeguard themselves, businesses must act swiftly, as a slow response could result in a severe data and security breach. This, on the other hand, is not so straightforward. cyberattacks have gotten more stealthy and difficult to detect. Traditional security measures can’t keep up with the scale of attacks, and they’re getting worse at detecting and preventing them. Furthermore, several security teams lack the necessary skill sets to successfully handle and monitor security alerts, as well as detect and respond to sophisticated complex cyber threats.
Automation in Cybersecurity
Today’s businesses need technological solutions that can not only predict cyber threats in real time, but also respond automatically and effectively. Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) — a set of technologies that enables enterprises to monitor, analyze, and respond to cyber threats swiftly – is quickly gaining traction in this scenario.
SOAR is a combination of automated processing of security information, orchestration of elements of a workflow involving data collection, adding context, approvals, and other audit-based markers, and the associated response or action. This combination is critical because each step can contribute to a stronger cybersecurity posture. Automation and orchestration, for example, can only be effective if organizations have sufficient threat intelligence data. Threat intelligence, likewise, is only effective if threats are not only detected, but also responded swiftly.
Let’s look at an example to understand this concept. Hackers send thousands of phishing e-mails to businesses every day. Security alert data from security solutions such as SIEM can be ingested by a SOAR platform. While investigating the malicious links, the SOAR platform collects crucial info from the malicious email and compares it to external threat intelligence data. It can then scan all emails and other endpoints for malicious emails or compromised systems, and delete all malicious emails. At the same time, intelligence about indicators of compromise is added to a blacklist, which can be used to automatically stop future suspicious emails. If the emails do not include any evidence of malicious indicators, the SOAR platform can be set to operate in conjunction with other security and ITOps solutions to isolate them and then forward them to an IT security team for additional investigation and analysis.
Automating the Incident Response Cycle
The incident response cycle can be automated with the help of SOAR. This involves ingestion of alerts, analysis, investigating incidents, hunting threats and finally, containing them through an automated response mechanism. Through a defined and repeatable process, it can also enforce process uniformity and compliance. By orchestrating with other security solutions such as SIEM, IDS/IPS, EDR, Firewalls, and others, SOAR can also help organizations to automate repetitive manual operations such as data collection and enrichment, as well as deliver countermeasures at machine speed.
Managed Detection and Response
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is a credible and feasible alternative that allows enterprises the capability to use an outsourced service that can respond swiftly to threats. A hundred percent remote, cloud-based virtual Security Operations Center (SOC), enabled by Machine Learning (ML) and the MITRE ATT&CK framework, which is a globally-accessible knowledge base of adversary tactics and techniques based on real-world observations is the foundation of an effective Managed Detection and Response. An MDR service can help organizations in developing insightful correlations between computer, network, and device logs by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and specialized workflows.
The MDR service, which comprises an EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response), network sensors, and SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) as part of the solution, can help in automating many of the SOC Tier 1 and 2 processes. The EDR will collect telemetry from managed endpoints as well as OS data points that are being generated, while network sensors will ingest network and DNS traffic. This gives security analysts extended visibility and enables automation to be run on those data sets.
Concluding Words
To summarize, responding to today’s sophisticated cyber threats necessitates organizations being continually alert and vigilant, since one simple error by anyone can quickly erode business trust. In order to maintain a proactive security posture, organizations cannot combat evolving threats without a high degree of automation.
In this context, SOAR is a efficient and comprehensive approach that can help organizations respond to security threats in an standardized manner by greatly decreasing the need for human intervention.
MDR services are particularly effective in enabling organizations to leverage automation to respond consistently, effectively, and swiftly, allowing them to be more resilient to emerging threats.