The complexity and scale of a typical enterprise network, along with the ever-evolving sophistication of cyber threats can make it incredibly difficult to weed out malicious actors from legitimate traffic with traditional, signature-based detection methods. Deep network visibility and advanced threat detection and prevention capabilities are essential in protecting enterprise networks against cyber threats. Network Detection and Response solutions offer an additional layer of network-level security that organisations require.
What is Network Detection and Response (NDR)?
Network Detection and Response (NDR) solutions detect suspicious traffic on enterprise networks using non-signature-based techniques such as behavioural analytics and machine learning. By continuously analysing raw traffic and flow traffic, NDR tools can build models that reflect typical network behaviour. An alert is sent to the security team if anomalous traffic patterns are detected, making them aware of the potential presence of a threat. The NDR solution then remediates the suspicious traffic accordingly.
Features of a typical NDR solution
Extensive network-wide visibility: Strategically placed network sensors monitor and analyse all network activity, providing comprehensive insights into who is on the network, the devices they are interacting with, where they are accessing the network from, and the types of data they are sharing. This provides invaluable threat intelligence for security teams such as the source, location, device type, event time stamps and activities.
Behavioural, non-signature-based detection techniques:
These techniques, which include machine learning and behavioural modelling, establish a baseline of normal network activity. If any traffic on the network deviates from the normal range, the NDR tools can quickly identify it and raise an alert. This includes suspicious traffic that traditional signature-based tools may miss, such as a login attempt using lost or stolen credentials, the use of restricted ports or protocols, or the hoarding and exfiltration of sensitive data by a malicious employee. Sophisticated NDR solutions are able to analyse encrypted traffic without decryption and detect threats that hide within encrypted traffic.
Intelligence Management: Some NDR solutions consume global threat intelligence to help identify suspicious traffic on the network and stop attackers who have tried to infect multiple victims with the same malware.
Accelerated threat response: The response capabilities of NDR solutions enhance manual incident response and threat hunting and streamline operations via automation. High-fidelity alerts issued by the NDR solution are prioritised by severity and immediate action is taken to remediate the threats. This may involve automatic remediation (e.g. instructing the firewall to drop suspicious traffic) or manual remediation (e.g. providing threat hunting and incident response tools).
How can your organisation benefit from NDR solutions?
As networks continue to become more complex and vast, the volume of data travelling across the distributed network has blown to an unprecedented level. As such, it's much easier for malicious actors to hide within an enterprise's network undetected. NDR solutions help to weed out the bad guys by collecting extensive telemetry from network devices and implementing analytical techniques that detect the threats that other tools miss entirely.
How COOLSPIRiT can help
We strive to help our customers save valuable time, money and resources which is why we have partnered with industry-leading NDR solution providers to offer a range of products suitable for organisations of all sizes.
Contact our expert team today to learn more at 01246 454 222 or hello@coolspirit.co.uk.
