In today’s threat landscape, adversaries are bypassing conventional security defenses at an alarming rate. Breaches can and do occur despite an organization’s best efforts. As 100% prevention is no longer realistic, network resilience and rapid response are crucial for security.
Network detection and response (NDR) solutions have emerged as a foundational component of modern defense strategies. The experts at Hillstone Networks (hillstonenet.com) say that by providing complete visibility and advanced analytics across the entire network estate, NDR enables faster threat detection, contained breach impact, and proactive hunting to build resilient networks.
The New Normal of Breaches
Defenders today face a new caliber of significantly more sophisticated and stealthy attacks than in years past. Highly evasive threats like zero-days and file-less malware now bypass traditional security defenses with alarming regularity. Extended dwell times measured in months allow adversaries to remain hidden while surveilling the network and inflicting greater damage over time. Skilled attackers use techniques like Patient Zero, golden ticket attacks, and island hopping to covertly expand footholds while avoiding detection.
The cold reality is that skilled, persistent attackers will eventually find a way in, despite an organization’s best efforts. Breach is the new normal. This makes it impossible to prevent every compromise with absolute certainty.
Need for Resilience and Speed
Against today’s advanced, stealthy threats, organizations can no longer rely solely on prevention. Key to surviving modern attacks is implementing resilience and speed. It is now essential to minimize business impact and data loss when – not if – a breach eventually occurs. Rapid detection and response is crucial for staying ahead of attackers and constraining their activities once inside your network. Deep network visibility and robust analytics are vital for uncovering threats before they inflict massive damage. Security teams need the capacity to outpace attacker activities post-compromise. This means that developing these resilience capabilities is a top priority for security leaders.
Network Detection and Response
NDR solutions provide the foundational visibility and threat insight across the entire network to enable resilience against advanced adversaries. Complete visibility into all network traffic flows reveals behavioral anomalies indicative of threats. Continuous analysis and baselining of network-wide inter-host communications identifies emerging compromises. Early indicators of hidden breach activity are surfaced through traffic analysis for prompt response. Retrospective analysis uncovers the full scope of how far threats spread for containment.
Benefits of NDR
Key advantages delivered by implementing NDR traffic analytics include:
- Significantly faster detection of hidden threats inside encrypted and approved traffic.
- Reduced dwell time and tighter constraint on attacker lateral movement.
- Improved investigation and incident response with expanded network forensic data.
- Proactive threat hunting to uncover advanced threats missed by other controls.
Looking Ahead
As threats continue to evolve, NDR platforms will need to advance as well to keep providing resilient security for modern networks. Some key developments on the horizon include:
- Expanded use of threat hunting algorithms and automation to continuously uncover hidden threats missed by other controls.
- Tighter integration with endpoints to correlate network and endpoint data for greater context and visibility across attack chains. Endpoint detection and response (EDR) and NDR working cooperatively will strengthen defenses.
- Increased capacity to ingest and analyze enormous volumes of traffic data at scale as network speeds grow. High-performance architectures optimized with machine learning will detect threats buried in expanding data.
- Leveraging deception technology and other active defense techniques to confuse and misdirect attackers. High-interaction honeypots within NDR can provide counterintelligence on attacker capabilities.
Conclusion
Today’s sophisticated attackers underscore the need for resilient security strategies centered on rapid detection and response. NDR is now an essential component of networks that are resilient by design against advanced threats.