Cybersecurity Tools

Introduction 

Threats are constantly evolving and just like everything else tend to follow certain trends, whenever a new type of threat is especially successful or profitable many others of the same type will inevitably follow, the best defenses need to mirror those trends, so users get the most robust protection against the newest wave of threats.


Hi folks. Welcome to blueguard.ng, today we are going to talk about cybersecurity tools that have stood still through thick and thin against various kinds of cyber attacks. Since there are multitude of tools spread out across various domains of cybersecurity, we are going to talk about one tool from each domain.  So let's begin without wasting much time. 

BluVector 

First on our list, is bluVector, now network security programs and human IT operators who manage them are under constant threat. New attack techniques like malware deployed without files are straining resources and testing defenses in two critical ways. 

First brand new threats and attack techniques often have at least a small window of time when they can bypass some defenses before defender catches up second, even if critical threat like zero day malware are stopped the constant siege of attackers means that defenders are likely to get overloaded by both real alerts and false positives. One possible solution that has only recently become an option is tasking machines and computers with protecting themselves. If a security program could be programmed to think that act like an analyst then it could try and counter malware and human-backed intrusion at machine speed, a move that would give defenders a serious home code advantage. This is exactly what BluVector defense tries to do. BluVector works almost right away, but also has deep machine learning capabilities. So it gets even smarter over time and learn the intricacies of each network that deploys it tweaking its algorithms and detection engines in a way that makes more sense for the environment.

BluVector is installed as either a hardware-based network appliance or as a virtual machine. It can operate in line with network traffic stopping and remediating threats in real time as they attempt to enter a protected space, or as a retrospective tool that can scan the work performed by other programs and analysts catching threats that they might have missed and recommending fixes.

It is designed to work with all ipv6 traffic as well as older ipv4 streams so it can operate in environments that are rich in Internet of Things and supervisory control and data acquisition devices such as those in industrial and manufacturing settings as well as for normal office type environments. 

Bricata

So that was it for blue vector, next up, on our list of cybersecurity tools is Bricata. These days. Even the most basic cybersecurity defenses for any medium to large enterprise will include an intrusion prevention system or an intrusion detection system even by itself a well-tuned IPS IDS system that is constantly monitored by security teams and will catch most network problems and security breaches. However, the fact that many organizations stop that, has led to an upstick in successful attacks designed specifically to operate in IDS blind spots. This is where Bricata platform comes into play at its core. 

Bricata offers advance IPS/IDS protection with multiple detection engines and threat feed to defend network traffic and core assets, but it goes a step further adding the ability to launch threat hunts based on events or simple anomalies. 

This would enable an organization to begin network-level threat hunting using the same stuff and tools they are already using for IPS monitoring. It would be a good step in the right direction towards better protection without the pain of installing additional programs or retraining stuff looking first at Bricata as a pure IDS system. It is deployed as a physical or virtual appliance that serves as the main collator point and user interface. This in turn links up to network sensors that are deployed at network choke points to capture traffic data while Ricotta sensors will almost always be deployed at network gateways. 

They can additionally be placed around core assets of internal points where network traffic flow to give platform visibility into horizontal movements or potential threats. 

Cloud Defender 

Now that you takes care of intrusion detection, up next on our list of tools is cloud defender by alert logic. Compared to traditional servers and client architectures cloud computing is the new kid on the block, while cybersecurity best practices are similar within a cloud environment many of the vulnerabilities and specific threats that target the cloud are different, as such even organizations with deep cybersecurity teams  may need a little help when moving large chunks of their computing infrastructure to the cloud, that is the whole idea behind cloud defender from alert logic. It's designed from the ground up as a way to provide protection to web applications, critical data and everything else running or stored within an organization's cloud. 

There's a whole sliding scale of support available at the low end, cloud defender is a user-friendly tool that would enable local IT staff to inspect the cloud deployment to look for evidences or hidden threats or breaches. At the other extreme  200% cybersecurity team at alert logic can take over most cloud-based cybersecurity functions offering monitoring advising and logging of events in a software as a service model when used as a software. Other logic will do everything short of remediating problems. 

Most organizations are probably want to use cloud defender as some combination of both SaaS security and as a tool to aid their local team. The platform is configured for this and making all logs and information collected by the program available at least for a year to local IT staffers. Cloud defender works with any cloud environment including Amazon web services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Services, VMware's and others. There is no difference in pricing based on the cloud environment, pricing is totally based on the number of nodes you being protected and the size of the log files being analyzed.

Cofense Triage 

Up next,  on our list of tools is cofense triage which works as a phishing defense tool, one of the most popular and quickest ways for attackers to enter a network these days is to trick a user into taking an action whether installing malware or providing their login credentials and they pretended to be a company official, a business partner or a family friend. Their chances of success in this act skyrockets, phishing email run the game from clumsily work, sweepstakes, type scams all the way up to highly researched and targeted campaign designed to attack a handful of key people at an organization. 

Yet despite the danger they pose most organizations have little or no defense against them. Back in 2008 when the original phish me product was deployed, which was also the name of the company at the time. There was also very low awareness of the danger that these types of email represented. The phish me simulation was created to allow network administrators and security personals to craft their own phishing emails to train users about the danger, sometimes hidden in mail messages as an organization, phish me has moved its focus away from pure education into threat remediation.

 Even the company's name is changing from phish me to co-fense which is a combination of collaborative and defense. One of the first co-fense branded products triage takes email reported by users as suspected phishing and helps to manage responses. In one sense the phish me product helps to make users more adept at spotting, phishing scams while triage creates a way for organizations to tap into new found skill set that the employees should have learned.

Contrast Security

The next tool in our list deals with application security, which is basically the convergence of endpoint security, network security and content security as you guys can see the name of the tool is contrast security, which is actually a suit of tools. Now as such cybersecurity programs tend to look at the problem of defense from a lot of different angles with expectations that enterprises will employ several different type of security at the same time. This has led to a different problems alert fatigue setting on IT teams, as all of those programs sound the alarm many times and all the time contrast security suit aims to change that trend in two important ways. 

Firstly, it takes one of the critical aspects of cyber security today that is application security and condenses it into a single program that can protect apps from the time of development, first begins all the way through the deployment and their full life cycle. 

Secondly, because contrast security embeds agents inside each app that is protecting, essentially becomes a part of the program. There is almost no chance of a false positive. In fact, it's code a rare hundred percent on the OWASP security benchmark passing over 2000 tests without generating any false positive. 

The secret source for contrast security is use of bytecode instrumentation, a feature in Java used to help integrate programs and application features during development. Only here contrast security uses it for the purpose of cybersecurity. Specifically embedding an agent into an application which will thereafter be directly monitored and protect it from the inside out. In a sense, it turns any type of normal application into one that is designed to focus on security, but don't worry all the normal business focus task of the app will still function. 

Digital Guardian 

So next on our list of tools is digital guardian, in recent years advanced threats have been increasingly targeting endpoints. This makes sense because endpoint security has traditionally been the realms of signature based anti viruses, technology that has proven to be inadequate protection against targeted and highly advanced malware campaigns. That is where digital guardian threat aware data protection platform comes in, with most endpoint security programs protection is delivered through the creation of rules, behavior that breaks the rules of the network is considered a suspect and is blocked flagged or otherwise becomes a subject of a security alert. One of the biggest problems with this method is that security is only as good as the rule set, administrators either must carefully craft rules based on their own expertise or set a protection program into learning mode for several weeks or months while it discovers good network behavior and crafts rules restricting everything else. The digital guardian platform by contrast come ready to use preloaded with thousands of best practices rules based on years of experience working in the field and after a quick data discovery process those rules are tailored to the specific network that it is protecting. This is all done nearly instantaneously so that when agents are deployed they can immediately begin protecting endpoints with good security policies.

Intellicta

Next on our list of cyber security tools, we have intellecta. There are important distinctions between compliance and security, they are meant to be mutually supporting with compliance rules put in place to provide a good security baseline, but it's possible to be completely in compliance with all applicable regulations and still not be adequately secure. The reverse is also true if an organization has deep security, but it's still not technically in compliance with applicable regulations should a data theft occur. They will likely still be held responsible sometimes financially because of the lack of compliance and just like compliance and security are similar but different so too are the skill set used to implement them. Organizations can have a deep IT or cybersecurity staff that is unskilled with compliance issues or unpracticed in knowing exactly which regulations apply, that is where the intellecta platform from Tech Democracy shines. The platform acts like a security information and event management console, but for compliance issues installed either as an on-premise or cloud-based console. It pulls information from a series of network collectors and correlates that data into continuously monitored compliance dashboard. It's a neat tool that every company should have.

Mantix4

Up next on our list of tools. We have the Mantix4 which is pretty interesting tool in my opinion, considering the insidious nature of advanced threats.

It's almost a certainty that every organization of any size will eventually be hacked or compromised, regardless of what or how many cybersecurity defenses are in place. In response, the somewhat new concept of threat hunting is becoming an increasingly important part of cybersecurity defenses. The Mantix4 platform named after the apex predator of the insect kingdom, the praying mantix, seeks to solve the people problems while the program provides robust threat hunting tools for use by clients. 

The company also employs a team of experts to hunt on their behalf. It takes threat hunting into the software as a service realm. Mantix4 was originally designed for the Canadian government's Department of Public Safety, which is the equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security in the United States. In Canada, Mantix4  helps to defend network sitting in 10 sectors considered critical infrastructure, rooting out sets that might bypass more traditional protection. 

The system is deployed as two components. The first part is comprised of observer sensors that sit at critical points within a protected network either alongside routers or at network gateways, though, they can be deployed almost anywhere depending on the need, the sensors are lightweight enough to be housed inside a virtual machine or within a network server with additional bandwidth. However, because the observer sensor process and record a lot of traffic the best deployment is probably going to be a small appliance that hosts nothing else, something the company provides the sensors can be set to work in line or to passively sniff network traffic. 

SecBI

Now, the last tool that we're going to discuss for today is a pretty important tool also in my opinion and it covers a very important aspect of any industry level cybersecurity plan, that is traffic analysis. Network traffic analysis tools have been used for a long time to help improve efficiencies in Enterprise Network locating unused capacity bandwidth and eliminating choke points. It has recently been employed as an arms of cybersecurity to that makes sense given that except for insider threats attacks are going to be initiated and ultimately controlled by outside elements. 

The communication between the internal threat malware and its controllers on the outside are captured by traffic analysis tools. The problem is that while the logic of using traffic analysis and cybersecurity is solid. The reality is a bit different for one even a small to medium-sized Enterprise is going to generate three or four billion traffic logs per month without computerized assistance. 

No human is going to be able to wait through that and find anything meaningful second capturing all that data traditionally requires the installation of network traps on gateways across the network for an organization with branch offices or remote locations. The number of traps installation can climb pretty high and even then some traffic may escape around those gateways. SecBI has fielded new software that aims to eliminate both of those problems, volume processing of data for actionable intelligent threat and a reliance on network trapping hardware.

They have done this by deploying their analyzer as a software module capable of running on-premise or in the cloud. It only looks at the log files. So there is no need for any network traps agents on the clients or anything beyond access to the constantly generated log files. It then crunches those billions of events in the logs using finely tuned algorithms that look for patterns associated with an ongoing attack or an advanced persistent threat.

It can be deployed with as a pay-as-you-go contract where users only pay based on how many gigabytes of log file data they need to process per day. 

Conclusion 

Okay guys, that was it from me for today. I hope you all learned something new about all these types of cybersecurity tools. Thank you and goodbye. I hope you have enjoyed reading to this post. Please be kind enough to share it and you can comment any of your doubts and queries and we will reply them at the earliest do look out for more posts on this blog. Happy learning!

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