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.
All communities in Abia State are to be connected to Internet Service within the next 9 months, according to Dr. Alex Otti, state governor.
All communities in Abia State are to be connected to Internet Service within the next 9 months, according to Dr. Alex Otti, state governor.
Otti stated this at the Nnamdi Azikiwe State Secretariat premises at Umuahia, the state capital, while flagging off the first phase of the Umuahia Dedicated Internet Access/Wide Area Network And Managed Network Services Project (Project), saying that it promises to re-engineer efficiency and flexibility in operations and interactions within and amongst institutions, enhance policy execution, and engender a culture of outcome-oriented competition amongst civil servants.
The Project is being handled by iPNX, a major internet service provider.
At the ceremony, Otti, said the project includes distributing high-performance digital tools, laying fibre optic cables in public institutions, and installing infrastructure for high-speed data transmission.
He added that the initiative focuses on improving leadership efficiency, empowering civil servants with digital tools, and enhancing service delivery.
Transitioning to digital platforms would streamline government processes, enable faster communication among Ministries, departments, and Areas (MDAs), and improve engagement with development partners and the global community.
The governor also announced a mandatory digital literacy requirement for civil servants, making proficiency in technology essential for career growth.
Assuring that while the government would provide training, those unwilling to embrace technology risk becoming uncompetitive in the evolving civil service structure.
Plans are underway to expand digital access across Abia, with an agreement already in place to lay fiber optic cables in Aba, Umuahia, and Ohafia.
Otti directed Mr. Gerald Ilukwe, chief information officer to ensure that within nine months, every community in Abia must have reliable network service, enabling businesses to thrive virtually.
The Governor urged the people of Abia to embrace technology as a tool for empowerment rather than a replacement for human roles as the use of technology ought to be on enhancing service delivery and economic development, as well as keeping human decision-making at the core of governance.
The commencement of the initiative marks a major milestone in Abia’s journey towards a fully digital economy.
Ilukwe, described the project as a critical foundation for a digital government, emphasising its role in modernising service delivery.
Ilukwe said Phase I of the initiative prioritises multi-tenant buildings and complexes housing multiple MDAs and assured that MDAs not included in this phase would be covered in subsequent stages.
“Even as we are rounding off this phase, we are already preparing for the next, by the end of this service year, the entire government offices in Umuahia will be interconnected on a single network,” Ilukwe said.
Mr Ejovi Aror, group managing director, ipNX, expressed gratitude to Gov. Alex Otti for the opportunity to be part of the state’s digital transformation journey.
“This partnership signals the beginning of a new chapter in the journey towards building a digitally connected, technologically advanced, and economically empowered Abia State,” Aror said.
Visa, global payment services giant, has announced plans to establish a data centre infrastructure in Nigeria.
Andrew Torre, Visa’s regional president for central and eastern Europe and Vice-President Kashim Shettima
According to a statement by Stanley Nkwocha, senior special assistant to the president on media and communications (office of the vice-president) on Friday, Andrew Torre, Visa’s regional president for central and eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, spoke during a courtesy visit to Vice-President Kashim Shettima at the presidential villa in Abuja.
“This is in addition to its investments of over $1 billion in the country, including a substantial technological partnership with @moniepoint to foster digital payment solutions, a $200 million investment in Interswitch, and a partnership with @thriveagric to empower smallholder farmers and enhance food security in Nigeria,” the statement reads.
During the meeting, Torre said the plan to establish the data centre infrastructure aims to bring new technologies into the Nigerian market that would bolster the nation’s growing digital economy.
“Visa has been making investments and will continue to make these investments in Nigeria,” he said.
Responding, Shettima welcomed Visa’s expansion efforts, assuring the delegation that the partnership between Visa and the Nigerian government would continue to flourish.
The vice-president commended the company for investing in ThriveAgric, noting that President Bola Tinubu’s administration is deeply committed to repositioning the agriculture sector, which remains a top priority in its 8-point agenda.
“Nigeria is where the action is. Of the 10 fintechs in Africa, about eight are in Nigeria, with moniepoint as the newest addition,” Shettima said.
“Agriculture is key to the 8-point agenda of the present administration. President @officialABAT is really keen on repositioning the agriculture industry here, and we have to invest in technology, we have to invest in modernisation.”
On January 23, Moniepoint, a Nigerian fintech company, announced it secured investment from Visa to support the growth of small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Andrew Torre, Visa’s regional president for central and eastern Europe and Vice-President Kashim Shettima
Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has approved N242.8m for the procurement of a Microsoft 365 licence for its Internal Revenue Service (FCT-IRS) as part of efforts to digitise the service’s operations.
Mr Michael Ango, acting executive chairman of FCT-IRS, disclosed this after the FCT Executive Committee meeting chaired by Mr Nyesom Wike, the minister of FCTA, in Abuja on Wednesday.
Ango said that the FCTA was making significant investments in technology to enhance revenue generation and collection.
“So, this is also one of those investments in technology that the FCT is undertaking.
“The licence, if procured, will enhance our ability to move most of our manual processes into automated processes.
“It will enhance our ability to communicate within our offices,” he said.
The executive chairman added that the move would also reduce the use of paper and ensure better record-keeping through the storage of information and documents in the cloud.
According to him, “The licence will essentially enhance our operations and assist us in generating revenue for the development of the FCT under Wike’s leadership.”
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