Why Advanced Security Behaviour Analysis

Applications have data on hosted on networks, servers, and cloud environments which can easily be compromised from a security standpoint. There are varieties of threats to data and there is no dearth of malwares in cyber world. Hence, no system is permanently secure.

Sometimes, hackers gaining unauthorized access to the system can appear to be huge nightmares regarding data security. Their breaches are usually detected when during odd hours, employee credentials are used to connect to a database server and run queries that the owner of credentials has never performed before.

Today, IP Addresses tracking and Firewalls alone cannot overcome the security related challenges of IT Industry.

Security related challenges of IT Industry

Cyber crime syndicates:

These days most malicious hacking attacks are the result of organized groups, many of which are professional. Traditional organized crime groups are into cyber crimes, very large groups of professional criminals aimed specifically at cyber crime.

Intellectual property theft and corporate espionage:

Most IT security pros have to contend with the large group of malicious hackers that exist only to steal intellectual property from companies or to perform straight-up corporate espionage. Those hackers break into a company's IT assets, dump all the passwords, and over time, steal gigabytes of confidential information: patents, new product ideas, military secrets, financial information, business plans, and so on.

They intend to find valuable information to pass along to their customers for financial gain, and they stay hidden inside the compromised company's network for as long as possible. Hackers eavesdrop on important emails, raid databases, and gain access to so much information that many have begun to develop their own malicious search engines and query tools to separate the fodder from the more interesting intellectual property.

This sort of attacker is known as an APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) or DHA (Determined Human Adversary).

Malware mercenaries

Today, there are teams and companies dedicated solely to writing malware. They turn out malware intended to bypass specific security defenses, attack specific customers, and accomplish specific objectives. Often A smaller stub program is tasked with the initial exploitation of the victim's computer. Once securely placed to ensure it lives through a reboot, it contacts a “mothership’ Web server for further instructions. After a series DNS queries sent to DNS servers that are just as likely to be innocently infected victim computers, the DNS servers move from computer to computer.

Once contacted, the DNS and mothership server often redirect the initiating stub client to other DNS and mothership servers. In this way, the stub client is directed over and over to newly exploited computers, until eventually the stub program receives its final instructions and the more permanent malicious program is installed.

The setup used by today's malware writers makes it very difficult for IT security pros to defend against their wares.

Botnets

Botnets are malware programs that create bots. Each version of the malware program attempts to exploit thousands to tens of thousands of computers in an effort to create a single botnet that will operate as one entity at the creator's bidding. Each bot in the botnet eventually connects back to its C&C (command and control) server(s) to get its latest instructions. Botnets have been found with hundreds of thousands of infected computers.

All-in-one malware

Today's sophisticated malware programs not only infect the end-user but also break into websites and modify them to help infect more victims. These all-in-one malware programs often come with management consoles so that their owners and creators can keep track of what the botnet is doing, who they are infecting, and which ones are most successful.

Most malicious programs are Trojan horses.

To all the problems listed above, the Advanced Security Behaviour Analysis offered by ProactEye is one solution. To analyse the behaviour of users and plan appropriate steps to strengthen the data security and IT Assets protection, one needs the Advanced Security Behaviour Analysis.

Key features of Advanced Security Behaviour Analysis

Automatic and always online: ProactEye keeps the security system online. It automatically detects suspicious files and block threats from reaching your network.

Debutant threats also quarantined: The Advanced Security Behaviour Analysis can quarantine suspicious files that might be some kind of malware or spyware that can steal the data from the infected computer. Hence, even if you are the first person to encounter a brand new advanced threat, you are still protected.

Enhance threat correlation and context: One can collect flow data from switches and routers. Advanced Security Behaviour Analysis correlates unusual network behaviour caused by intrusions.

The Advanced Security Behaviour Analysis includes User Behaviour Analysis (UBA) where big data and machine learning algorithms are used to assess the risk, in near-real time, of user activity.

What does UBA offer?

UBA employs modeling to establish what normal behaviour of every user looks like. This modeling incorporates information about: user roles and titles from Human Resources (HR) applications or directories.

These applications or directories include access, accounts and permissions; activity and geographic location data gathered from network infrastructure; alerts from defence in depth security solutions, and more. This data is correlated and analyzed on the basis of past and on-going activity.

UBA performs risk modeling. Anomalous behaviour is not automatically considered a risk. First, it is evaluated in light of its potential impact. If apparently anomalous activity involves resources that are not sensitive, like conference room scheduling information, the potential impact is low. However, attempts to access sensitive files like intellectual property, carries a higher impact score.

UBA collects, correlates, and analyzes hundreds of attributes. That includes situational information and third-party threat information. The result is a rich, context-aware petabyte-scale dataset.

Advanced Security Behaviour Analysis also helps in detecting zero-day network intrusions. It classifies the intrusions to tackle network security threats in real time, offering actionable intelligence to detect a broad spectrum of external and internal security threats as well as continuous overall assessment of network security.