A key aspect of cyber defense is minimizing damage to a network. With the development of deception technology, organizations can observe the real-world tools that cyber criminals use. However, for deception technology to be effective, it must be convincing and create an environment that is indistinguishable from the authentic atmosphere of an organization. Below are five areas where deception technology can be beneficial.
Low-interaction deception
What is deception technology? | Fortinet Dynamic deception technology limits the ability of threat actors to interact with the decoy. The decoy is typically deployed in a static environment, requiring little maintenance. Because decoys are low-interaction, they are not prone to detection by attackers. A typical example is a file location that is fictitious or false. The technology would alert the security team if a malicious actor attempted to access the data.
Attackers aim to build a backdoor, allowing them to access confidential information and intellectual property. They move through internal VLANs, triggering alerts corresponding to ongoing attacks. As attackers interact with the temptations, they are lured to follow the breadcrumbs, leading to the detection and eradication of malicious behavior. Deception technology facilitates automated analysis of injected malware.
Automated deception
Automation can provide organizations with a valuable new capability in threat detection, leveraging its low false-positive alerts for proactive threat hunting and integrated response. Deceiving attackers can prevent them from reaching their target, allowing security professionals to respond quickly.
One way to use deception technology is to profile your environment and understand how attackers operate in that environment. MITRE provides a free knowledge base of standard techniques and can help experts take proactive steps to protect their networks and assets.There’s a lot you can learn about this technology. It’s crucial to understand the full capabilities of this technology and the limitations of your existing security tools.
Detection of attempted reconnaissance
Detection of attempted reconnaissance using dynamic-deception technology covers the entire kill-chain, from the initial survey through the reporting of lateral movement. In addition, deception can help prevent false positives that slow down security teams and drag them through triage workflows. Validate alerts are often more costly than the remediation measures necessary to mitigate the threat. By covering the kill chain, deception alerts are contextual and comprehensive.
To avoid getting caught, attackers can inject fake records into a user’s browser history, password manager, and other common internal reconnaissance points. By making these assets look like regularly-used assets, attackers can quickly gain access to valuable information without the user realizing it. To further complicate the situation, attackers can inject a fake document into the victim’s browser history, which will be detected as an attempt to access data.
Reduces false positives
The ability to deploy and manage many distributed deceptions across various network topologies is a significant benefit of Dynamic Decoy Technology. The deception assets can seamlessly blend in with a company’s standard ICT environment by utilizing a distributed, software-based approach. Additionally, this deception technology scales on multiple dimensions, including ROBO coverage and the nature of workloads.
While this approach works for larger enterprises, it is beneficial for mid-sized security teams that face the dilemma of limited resources and budgets combined with significant threat perception. Deception technology reduces false positives while allowing security teams to focus on more critical threats. In addition, this approach allows threat hunters to identify and react to targeted attacks in minutes, freeing up their precious man-hours for more difficult adversaries.
Reduces alert fatigue
A key contributor to data breaches and missed threats is alert fatigue, which can leave analysts with an unfocused mindset and cause them to reroute their attention to less important tasks. Fortunately, Deception Technology minimizes alert fatigue by ensuring that all critical information is delivered to an analyst without distraction. As a result, 50% of security analysts will turn off distracting alert sources to save themselves from the frustration of responding to false positives.
Early detection is critical because attackers are most vulnerable during the initial network access and foothold systems. Deception defenses are an excellent way to give your organization an edge with breadcrumbs of tangible assets while luring attackers to decoys. Alarm fatigue is an issue that drains precious resources and is a leading contributor to alert fatigue. Fortunately, deception provides high fidelity alerts with minimal false positives, which means fewer false positives for IT teams.
