Don’t Gamble with your Cybersecurity Solution

Did you know that more data records were exposed last year than in the previous 15 years combined, even as cybersecurity spending actually increased by 10% at the same time?[1] To turn this trend around, we don’t need bigger cybersecurity teams on the case. We need to change the game.

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When I discuss this topic with customers or prospects, I often use a simple analogy: catching today’s sophisticated hackers is much like stopping the cheaters that target casinos. Examining the parallels between the two helps shed light on what’s broken in the industry’s common strategy to cybersecurity and how Confluera’s approach solves the problem.

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The problem is not a lack of investment

Criminals have pursued advantages and loop holes to cheat casinos since the earliest days of legalized gambling, and their creativity seems to know no bounds. Counting cards, counterfeiting currency, and exploiting software vulnerabilities are all ploys that continue to plague casinos to this day. Some crooks are less creative but make up for it with sheer boldness, like cashier William Brennan who simply walked out the door with a big bag of loot back in 1992.[2]

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Much like cybersecurity organizations that continue increasing their budgets, a lack of investment in security is rarely the issue for casinos. In fact, they spend millions deploying massive arrays of monitoring equipment and training their staff to identify cheaters. Yet the bad guys often evade suspicion and avoid getting caught for years, if they ever get caught at all. For those in cybersecurity, this story is all too familiar.

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Understanding each user’s unique behavior trail is the key

The behavior of cybercriminals and casino heisters is what sets them apart from the crowd of honest patrons, but it’s also the reason why they can be so hard to stop. These bad actors are nearly impossible to spot without paying close attention to how they behave, which can look down right identical to how normal users behave on a day-to-day basis. Hackers can log into the network legitimately just as cheaters can walk through the casino’s front door.

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For instance, a card dealer might notice a suspicious streak of luck at their table with one particular patron. Once they report it, behind-the-scenes investigators must then manually search through hours if not days, weeks, or months of archival footage in an attempt to understand what is happening now and what happened earlier, all while the winning streaks continue.

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Cybersecurity teams face similar challenges as much of their success hinges upon the manual efforts and skillsof individuals spending their days combing through log files, alarms, detections, and more, all in an attempt to pinpoint and better understand suspicious behavior. Even with the help of advanced technology solutions, the manual labor burden still weighs heavily on these cybersecurity teams, and too many critical breaches continue to slip through the cracks.

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How Confluera changes the game

Instead of perpetuating this expensive and arduous security strategy, as far too many cybersecurity solutions do to this day, Confluera takes a modernized approach by continuously tracking the actions of everyone who enters a network in real-time. This approach, called “storyboarding,” creates a complete history, or trail progression, of every move a user makes. With this approach, far fewer attacks are missed andmany more are prevented.

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The instant a user does something suspicious, a threat signal is triggered androuted to the appropriate groups who can immediately stop the threat in its tracks. Unlike other cybersecurity solutions, Confluera pieces together the full story of a hacker’s every move from the moment they entered the network, leaving no doubt as to how they behaved from the very beginning and eliminating the persistent issue of false positives.

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Think of how valuable it would be for a casino to run a report on an individual’s complete history the second a dealer notices suspicious behavior. Confluera can provide a storyboard for any individual at any time that essentially does just that. No more guesswork or time-consuming manual labor. Barring the ability to turn back time, it is hard to imagine a more powerful or effective security capability.

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Automating investigation to get to answers faster

Because Confluera’s platform, powered by a distributed graphing technology, can quickly identify the relevant causal relationships between user behaviors and security events, our customers quickly get to answers faster. Our platform allows them to cut down on the time it takes to identify and investigate critical threats from months to hours, reducing strain on their teams’ already limited resources. In a marketplace where cybersecurity talent is hard to come by, automating more of this complex and costly process gives you an edge.

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As a cybersecurity professional, you can finally say goodbye to the days of manually researching and investigating individual detections. With Confluera, our technology does the work for you and your team, protecting your organization from the inevitable next attack and preventing any jackpots from ever leaving the building.

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To learn more about how Confluera can improve your organization's cybersecurity, contact us to get more information and schedule a demo.

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https://www.confluera.com/demo

[1] https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/cybersecurity-investment-2020

[2] https://allthatsinteresting.com/bill-brennan-robbery