Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Network Security

Making Intrusion Prevention and Malware Protection Work Together to Combat Modern Attacks

There’s a lot of talk in the security industry and among organizations about the threats we face – malware, advanced persistent threats, zero-days, targeted attacks, viruses, Trojans, Distributed Denial of Service attacks, worms, phishing…the list goes on and on. But no matter how you parse it, it all comes down to threats. More specifically, two fundamental types of threats: known and unknown.

There’s a lot of talk in the security industry and among organizations about the threats we face – malware, advanced persistent threats, zero-days, targeted attacks, viruses, Trojans, Distributed Denial of Service attacks, worms, phishing…the list goes on and on. But no matter how you parse it, it all comes down to threats. More specifically, two fundamental types of threats: known and unknown.

Known threats are the ones your security tools are designed to detect and protect against. Still, successful attacks by known threats happen and there’s room for improved protection. Historically static defenses quickly lose touch with the environment they’re meant to protect, reducing their effectiveness. Most lack real-time network visibility to be aware of changes to the IT environment and adjust defenses accordingly, the ability to detect polymorphic files that change just enough to fool signature engines and the ability to share intelligence with other security tools.

Unified Security SolutionsUnknown threats pose an even greater challenge for defenders. These sophisticated threats stealthily evade detections, moving through an environment to reach the target and establishing a beachhead for subsequent attacks. Traditional, point-in-time detection tools, like sandboxing that analyzes files in a tightly controlled environment, can mitigate some risk but don’t – and can’t – continue to track files to retrospectively detect, understand and stop threats that initially appear to be safe but later exhibit malicious behavior.

As an IT security professional it’s your job to protect your organization against both types of threats. While it is a challenge, it isn’t insurmountable. Three advanced technologies can make intrusion prevention systems (IPS) smarter and malware protection more efficient: contextual awareness, big data analytics and collective security intelligence – all working together.

Contextual Awareness – Today’s extended networks include endpoints, mobile devices, and virtual environments and data centers. Attackers often know more about these networks than the network owners and are using it to their advantage. For security tools to be effective they need complete contextual awareness of the dynamic environment they protect. Consider technologies that offer continuous and total visibility into all devices, applications and users on a network as well as an up-to-the-minute network map, including profiles on client applications, operating systems, mobile devices and network infrastructure – physical and virtual. Smarter security solutions use the data related to your specific environment and automation to help you make more informed and timely security decisions. Visibility into file activity is equally important – knowing file heritage, behavior, and network trajectory provides additional context, or indicators of compromise, which help to determine malicious intentions, impact and accelerate remediation.

Big Data Analytics – Security has become a big data problem. You need technologies that tap into the power of the cloud and sophisticated analytics of large data sets to deliver the insight you need to identify more advanced, highly targeted threats. The virtually unlimited, cost-effective storage and processing power of the cloud lets you store and monitor information about unknown and suspicious files across your entire IT environment and beyond. Security tools that use a telemetry model to continuously gather data across the extended network and then leverage big data analytics help you detect and stop malicious behavior even after a threat has passed through the initial lines of defense. This deeper level of analysis identifies threats based on what the file does, not what it looks like, enabling detection of new unknown types of attacks.

Collective Security Intelligence – To identify more obscured threats, there’s strength in numbers. Individual files shouldn’t be analyzed in a vacuum – collective security intelligence enabled by the cloud is required. Look for security technologies that can draw from a widespread community of users to collect millions of file samples and separate benign file and network activity from malicious based on the latest threat intelligence and correlating symptoms of compromise. Going a step further, this collective intelligence can be turned into collective immunity by sharing the latest intelligence and protections across the user base.

Attackers have learned how to find and anticipate gaps in protection and evade detection. Using real-time visibility, big data analysis and community intelligence to connect traditionally disparate technologies is what it will take to defend modern networks against modern attacks. To more effectively protect your organization against known and unknown threats IPS and malware protection must work together, in a continuous fashion, to secure networks, endpoints, virtual machines and mobile devices.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.
Written By

Marc Solomon is Chief Marketing Officer at ThreatQuotient. He has a strong track record driving growth and building teams for fast growing security companies, resulting in several successful liquidity events. Prior to ThreatQuotient he served as VP of Security Marketing for Cisco following its $2.7 billion acquisition of Sourcefire. While at Sourcefire, Marc served as CMO and SVP of Products. He has also held leadership positions at Fiberlink MaaS360 (acquired by IBM), McAfee (acquired by Intel), Everdream (acquired by Dell), Deloitte Consulting and HP. Marc also serves as an Advisor to a number of technology companies.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Identity & Access

Zero trust is not a replacement for identity and access management (IAM), but is the extension of IAM principles from people to everyone and...

Malware & Threats

The NSA and FBI warn that a Chinese state-sponsored APT called BlackTech is hacking into network edge devices and using firmware implants to silently...

Cybersecurity Funding

Network security provider Corsa Security last week announced that it has raised $10 million from Roadmap Capital. To date, the company has raised $50...

Network Security

Attack surface management is nothing short of a complete methodology for providing effective cybersecurity. It doesn’t seek to protect everything, but concentrates on areas...

Application Security

Virtualization technology giant VMware on Tuesday shipped urgent updates to fix a trio of security problems in multiple software products, including a virtual machine...

Identity & Access

Hackers rarely hack in anymore. They log in using stolen, weak, default, or otherwise compromised credentials. That’s why it’s so critical to break the...

Application Security

Fortinet on Monday issued an emergency patch to cover a severe vulnerability in its FortiOS SSL-VPN product, warning that hackers have already exploited the...

Cyberwarfare

Websites of German airports, administration bodies and banks were hit by DDoS attacks attributed to Russian hacker group Killnet