How Do Cybersecurity Professionals Investigate Threats?

If you work for an enterprise business, you need to have a basic understanding of cybersecurity. While your IT team likely owns and executes the cybersecurity plan, you have access to vital information about the organization. Hackers love to target the credentials of individuals in leadership roles in the hopes of using stolen reputation to nudge unsuspecting employees to act on their malicious plans.

A breach of security is costly. Researchers estimate that just under 30 percent of organizations will see one security breach or more within the next 24 months. Understanding how IT and security professionals monitor, investigate, and eliminate threats are critical roles for any enterprise leader.

Advanced Cybersecurity Software

As cyberattacks have evolved, so have cybersecurity tools. Forward-thinking organizations have deployed endpoint detection and response (EDR) software to monitor and record endpoint and network events to a central database in the cloud, to better detect, identify, and prevent advanced threats.

By leveraging endpoint detection and response software, you can provide your business with a set of sophisticated analytics tools. These tools can identify patterns and anomalies, such as unrecognized connections to the network, unauthorized application processes, and other suspicious activities. The continuous monitoring and automatic alerting help provide an ever-vigilant overlay of protection for your network and endpoints.

The SecOps Approach

IT teams and security operations (SecOps) should be closely aligned and have a mutual goal of keeping the network and its endpoints safe. However, there are fundamentally different approaches and priorities that can result in inefficiencies, organizational silos, different toolsets, and a reduced overall security posture in the gray area of who owns a process.

The difference between IT and security teams is that they see their roles differently. IT focuses on processes, budgets, maintenance of legacy systems, development plans, and upgrades to deliver reliable service to the organization. For IT, security is a part of that package. In contrast, security teams primarily focus on threats, risk mitigation, incident response, and remediation.

When IT and SecOps teams work together more closely, they can better align their priorities and share accountability for the security of their enterprise environment. With an aligned cross-functional team, there is better clarity in understanding security vulnerabilities throughout the organization and sharing vital information that can help resolve security issues quickly while keeping IT operations and systems up and running.

Threat Hunting

The best IT and SecOps teams take aggressive steps to defend against cyberattacks. Trying to harden the network and endpoints in today’s environment is not enough. The best organizations embrace threat hunting.

Working under the assumption that there has already been a breach, and hackers are already inside the network, Threat hunting works by searching for indicators of compromise (IOCs). As such, they can be mitigated or patched before they become a problem.

Response and Remediation

Working under the assumption that a breach will occur requires that you plan to respond to and remediate issues when found. Incident response offers companies the steps they need to respond to a cyberattack or actual breach.

The goal of incident response is to manage the attack rapidly and effectively to limit the damage and associated time and dollars associated with recovery. Additionally, incident response minimizes brand and reputation damage.

Cybersecurity and Enterprise Business

Enterprise organizations have the advantage of scale and the resources to create a robust cybersecurity practice. Unfortunately, they are lucrative targets for hackers since enterprises have a broad range of network endpoints that cybercriminals can attack. Ensuring that your IT and SecOps teams are working together and aligned on their priorities with a supported by a robust EDR platform to conduct threat hunting and incident response, you are well on your way to defending against most attacks.