E-Business
Improve Security Posture Enabled Endpoint Detection and Response
By Jimi Falaiye
Cybercrime is big business and hackers are continually looking for new attack vectors. SophosLabs team see 400,000 new malicious samples every day; this does not mean 400,000 programmers writing code.
It means heavily automated systems. The result is bespoke malware – a virus written just for you. With that reality, the best line of defense is to use a multi-layered security strategy to work to protect organisations against both known and unknown threats.
The best endpoint technologies will protect organisations against the majority of malware and threats impacting their organisation.
But as the threat landscape evolves and cybercriminals continue to morph attacks and work to find new security holes to access organisations, the unknown minority becomes important.
Endpoint detection and response tools are about detecting that minority.
EDR tools are built to supplement endpoint security with increased detection, investigation, and response capabilities. However, EDR tools can make it difficult to understand how exactly they can be used and why they are needed.
Making matters worse, today’s EDR solutions often struggle to provide value for many organisations as they can be difficult to use, lack sufficient protection capabilities, and are resource intensive.
The good news is deep learning enabled EDR tools provide the easiest way for organisations to answer the tough questions about security incidents.
Here are the ways how deep learning enabled EDR tools help organisations to add an additional layer to their security posture.
EDR helps in generating clear view of an organization’s security posture
The hardest question for most IT and security teams is “are we secure right now?” This is because most networks have sizable blind spots that make IT and security teams struggle to see what is going on inside their environments. Lack of visibility is the primary reason why organisations struggle to understand the scope and impact of attacks.
This often manifests itself when an incident occurs and the team assumes they are safe because that incident was detected. Deep learning enabled EDR provides this additional insight as well as determines if other machines were impacted.
Generating a clear view of an organization’s security posture provides the benefit of being able to report on compliance status. This information will help identify areas that may be vulnerable to attacks. It also allows administrators to determine if the scope of an attack has impacted areas where sensitive data is housed.
It provides additional layer of detection
When it comes to cybersecurity, even the most advanced tools can be defeated given enough time and resources, making it difficult to truly understand when attacks are happening. Organisations often rely solely on prevention to stay protected, and while prevention is critical, EDR offers another layer of detection capabilities to potentially find incidents that have gone unnoticed.
Organisations can leverage EDR to detect attacks by searching for indicators of compromise (IOCs). This is a quick and straightforward way to hunt for attacks that may have been missed.
It increases response time to potential incidents
Once incidents are detected, IT and security teams usually scramble to remediate them as fast as possible to reduce the risk of attacks spreading and to limit any potential damage. On average, security and IT teams spend more than three hours trying to remediate each incident. EDR can speed this up significantly.
The first step an analyst might take during the incident response process would be to stop an attack from spreading. Analysts will often do this before investigating, buying time while they determine the best course of action.
The investigation process can be a slow and painful one. This of course assumes an investigation occurs at all. Incident response traditionally relies heavily on highly-skilled human analysts.
Most EDR tools also rely heavily on analysts to know which questions to ask and how to interpret the answers. However, with deep learning enabled EDR, security teams of all skill levels can quickly respond to security incidents thanks to guided investigations that offer suggested next steps, clear visual attack representations, and built-in expertise.
It adds expertise without adding headcount
By a large margin, organisations looking to add endpoint detection and response capabilities cite “staff knowledge” as the top impediment to EDR adoption. To combat the staff knowledge gap deep learning enabled EDR replicates the capabilities associated with hard-to-find analysts. It leverages machine learning to integrate deep security insight, so organisations can add expertise without having to add staff.
It helps in understanding how an attack happened and how to stop it from happening again
Threat cases, included with EDR, spotlight all the events that led up to a detection, making it easy to understand which files, processes, and registry keys were touched by the malware to determine the impact of an attack.
More importantly, by understanding the root cause of an attack, the IT team will be much more likely to prevent it from ever happening again.
Jimi Falaiye is the Country Manager Nigeria, Sophos.
The Senate has passed a bill, seeking to repeal and re-enact the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) Act.
This followed adoption of report of Committee on National Identity Card and Population at plenary on Wednesday.
The report was presented by Senator Victor Umeh (LP-Anambra), chairman of the committee.
Senator Umeh in his presentation said the bill sought to provide for the establishment of a national identity database and the National Identity Management Commission.
According to him,the agency will be charged with responsibilities for maintenance of national database, the registration of individuals and the issuance of identity credentials.
He said the bill would lead to the creation of national identity database to source business biometric and empower NIMC to issue regulations and guidelines for implementation of the act and other related matters.
He said the bill sought to strengthen the legal framework of national and digital identity, hereby creating an optimal foundational identification ecosystem that fosters inclusion, universal coverage, and accessibility.
Senator Umeh said the act would establish a harmonious foundational identity system that is governed by a less restrictive, less cumbersome, non-discriminatory, non-punitive data protection, cost-effective, and compliance with global borders.
Senator Umeh said the bill, when passed into law, would address the challenges and limitations of national Identity management commission Act 2007, repeal it, and then close the gap of incomplete and inaccurate national identity database, provide efficient governance and service delivery.
He said the bill received overwhelming support from stakeholders at the public hearing due to the need to implement the long-awaited database system.
The World Bank has expressed concern over Nigeria’s poor statistical performance, noting that the country lags behind its aspirational peers such as Mexico, Colombia, South Africa and Brazil.
Mrs. Julie Osagie-Jacobs, director, Information and Public Relations, Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, stated this in a statement after a courtesy visit to Senator Abubakar Bagudu, minister of Budget and Economic Planning, by a delegation from the World Bank led by Ndiame Diop, country director; and Mr Johan Mistiaen, practice mfor West and Central Africa, on Wednesday.
In his presentation titled “Next Level Statistics to Support Nigeria’s Reform and Growth Agenda,” Mistiaen stated that Nigeria’s statistical system was not on par with those of its developmental counterparts.
He advised that an annual investment of between $10m and $15m in the country’s statistical infrastructure would significantly improve performance and align Nigeria with its peers.
The statement read in part, “Earlier, Mr. Johan Mistiaen in his presentation on the next level statistics to support Nigeria’s reform and growth agenda, observed that the country’s statistical performance was not at par with its aspirational peers as Mexico, Colombia, South Africa and Brazil.
“He suggested that investing about $10-15m annually into the country’s statistical system can raise performance to that of its aspirational peers.”
Responding, Bagudu assured that the Federal Government would continue to guarantee the independence of the National Bureau of Statistics.
He commended the Bureau for consistently releasing credible and methodical data that have been relied upon by reputable international organisations.
The minister stressed that there would be no government interference in the operations of the NBS.
Federal government has disclosed that efforts are ongoing to link the National Social Register (NSR) to the National Identity Numbers (NIN).
Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda, minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, explained that the linked data would assist the country to anticipate crises, mobilize resources faster, and ensure aid reaches those who need it the most.
He said harnessing data would save the country and relevant stakeholders the stress and bottlenecks of outdated processes.
He also identified bureaucratic crisis as the biggest crisis in the humanitarian space which stalls responses to humanitarian issues.
Speaking in Abuja on Tuesday at the National Humanitarian Roundtable programme, the minister said: “People are traumatized by climate change, security threats and economic shock across the country and in the midst of these, we have limited funding.
“The biggest crisis we have is not just the people being killed, the crisis we have is a bureaucratic crisis that does not respond to a humanitarian crisis. Every delay in decision making, every inefficiency in coordination, every shortfall in funding, costs the life of people.
“They say knowledge is power, but knowledge can be destructive too. It can only be power if we use it effectively. By leveraging data and technology, we can anticipate crises; we can mobilize resources faster and ensure aid reaches those who are in need the most and without the bottleneck of outdated processes.
“We are linking the social register to national identity numbers and geotagging all homes of those who are vulnerable across the country so that if there’s any crisis, we don’t need to begin to walk around communities and taking names and asking the States Emergency Management Agency and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) for data.
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