Many security leaders are looking to increase the efficiency of their operations, but there are significant barriers to achieving efficiency nirvana. Too many tools, lengthy investigations, staffing challenges, and a never-ending flood of alerts can stress even the most resilient security program. Today, security teams are forced to do more with the same approach. With budgets stagnating, the focus must be on improving efficiency in two areas: the security planning process and the technologies utilized. Improve project efficiency
1. Utilize a framework for creating structure and flow A sure sign that cybersecurity as an industry is maturing is the availability of trusted frameworks for organizing investigation and response efforts. Frameworks like MITER ATT&CK catalog attacker behavior into a library of tactics, techniques, and procedures that help analysts quickly understand the details of an adversary's behavior, thereby reducing response time. Other valuable frameworks include ISO, NIST, and the Lockheed Martin Cyber Kill Chain.
2. Information sharing and online communities Things move quickly in cybersecurity, and keeping abreast of TTPs, supply chain attacks, ransomware, and industry-specific attack trends is a daily process. Where you go for information matters, and getting early warning from a trusted source can save valuable time responding when the next supply chain attack strikes. Do I have peers in similar job functions with whom I can share cleaned up information and get tips in return? Where do I go when there is breaking news about a new attack or IOC in the online community? Twitter has a vibrant infosec community of experts and even small influencers who share everything from DFIR tips to TTPs to interesting investigative anecdotes. There are many freely available resources for sharpening your safety axe.
3. Team management and empowerment Finding talent is understandably difficult. Seasoned analysts should be valued for their experience, but new talent should also be considered. Applicants from technical backgrounds in IT or other fields may rise quickly if given the opportunity in the right conditions and environment. Leaders should strive to create an environment where junior team members learn and become senior team members under their supervision. Hiring is a challenge in itself, but after creating the right team and the right team environment, retaining the team becomes the next hurdle. A team with active support and information sharing, and an ethos to drive efficiency across all operations, helps analysts avoid burnout from task redundancy.
4. Configuration and tuning While not an issue for Cybereason customers, it may be necessary to step back from the daily detection, investigation, and response cycle and adjust current solutions to be more efficient. Spending cycles configuring a solution to be most efficient is not an ideal use of time as it can create a backlog, but the benefits can be huge. Is there a way to block and reduce the noisy behavior seen? Are there repeated false positives that could be added to the whitelist? What about DNS? These types of configurations can reduce the overall burden of alerts that require investigation.
5. Table and event planning Practice makes perfect. Incident response should not be an uncoordinated fire drill, but a flexible application of predetermined steps to emergencies. Join the team to discuss how to respond to a severe ransomware incident or handle a tabletop scenario of a supply chain attack where an adversary piggybacks trusted software into the environment, allowing everyone to prepare and refine for a real event.
Improve technical efficiency with CYBEREASON
6. Graphical analysis to see the whole picture The MalOp™ (Malicious Operation) detection engine provides industry-leading graph analysis to detect and decipher threats. Not all graphs are created equal, some have AI capabilities similar to Mensa, Cybereason falls into that camp. We understand complex data relationships. The MalOp detection engine is the brains behind the scenes, stitching together an operational or comprehensive understanding of an attack. Attacks span multiple devices and users, and once an adversary is infiltrated, they can gain access to large areas of the enterprise. If you use techniques that raise the alarm individually and are unable to piece together the story and timeline of an attack from multiple endpoints, you incur a huge efficiency cost.
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7. Senior Junior Analyst at MALOP Analysts greatly benefit from actionability. Anything a solution can do to reduce the amount of manual time teams spend digging through a given alert or investigation is beneficial, and technology should be expected to bridge any gaps in analyst skill levels or number of alerts. Detection should arrive in such a way that it is possible to quickly understand what happened, why it was malicious, the severity of the operation, and how to respond. MalOp consolidates alerts and presents the full attack narrative in an intuitive view that analysts of any skill level can easily digest and then respond to comprehensively. MalOp is a core concept in the Cybereason EDR UI, and analysts of any skill level can easily turn to the threat hunting dashboard or other areas to advance investigations when needed. The efficiency gains brought about by the Cybereason defense platform mean that small teams perform as well as larger, better-resourced teams.
8. OFFLOAD SECURITY WORKLOAD TO CYBEREASON MDR SERVICE Cybereason MDR eliminates alert fatigue with a managed service that detects in 1 minute, triages in 5 minutes, and responds in 30 minutes. This clears cycles of bandwidth for overburdened teams to focus on higher priority tasks. Our experts bring not only industry-leading SLOs, but also an adversarial mindset and decades of experience in offensive cyber operations. Cybereason's understanding of how adversaries operate and upgrade is invaluable to hosting partners.
9. Threat hunting and investigation Threat Hunting has historically been reserved for Level III and more experienced investigators. This high barrier to entry creates a backlog of incidents worth investigating, slowing down the overall average response time. Cybereason solves this problem by lowering the threshold for threat hunting. Analysts don't need to bring years of query language development skills to the table, rather any talent available can build threat hunting queries point-and-click within the Cybereason console.
10. Modernize your security stack An underperforming solution can severely impact a team's effectiveness. Cybereason transforms your security posture into a future-proof state, capable of fighting even the most advanced adversary TTP. Next-gen prevention stops ransomware and sophisticated malware at the first sign of malicious activity. Fallback Detection and Response combines individual malicious components into a complete view of an attack, designed to handle high volumes of alerts and integrate with dozens of data sources and XDR integrations.