With organizations relying on increasingly complex and distributed networks and cloud-based services, new approaches are necessary to confront the evolving threat landscape. In this article, Gilad David Maayan, CEO, Agile SEO, describes several cutting-edge tools to help address sophisticated security threats and streamline security processes.
Let’s learn more about each of these new-age tools in detail.
eXtended Detection and Response (XDR)
SOC analysts constantly face new and sophisticated threats to their organizations. This is made more difficult by the presence of numerous security tools, which are often not properly integrated. Each tool requires different expertise and has a separate user interface that security teams need to learn. SOC analysts are required to have a wider understanding of attack vectors, understanding the entire MITRE kill chain and not just perimeter security and packet analysis.
Endpoint and identity detection is built into many commercial SIEMs, but often does not provide a correlation between events or show that an attacker has moved from one identity to another. This just adds noise for the analyst and can even map seemingly legitimate access spikes to attack indicators. XDR can help by providing more context about security incidents across multiple security silos.
XDR is a cloud-based solution that simplifies threat detection and response. It combines data from many sources—including endpoints, networks, cloud services, email and authentication.Â
XDR connects multiple security stacks to provide a comprehensive view of security incidents and provides advanced threat detection and response through correlation and analysis. It is not limited to detection. It also helps simplify and automate responses to detected threats. The core theme of XDR is simplicity. XDR should be a turnkey tool that works effectively out of the box.Â
XDR integrates toolsOpens a new window to support the entire threat detection and incident response (TDIR) workflow and security stack, from data collection to normalization, correlated attack detection, investigation and response. This reduces the number of tools and interfaces security teams have to use, streamlines workflows with pre-built playbooks and automations, and creates a standard approach to incident resolution.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
Software composition analysis (SCA)Opens a new window technology and identify all open source components and libraries incorporated into a software project. It helps manage security and licensing risks by ensuring that the open source components embedded in software products meet specific standards.Â
Software development teams employ SCA to avoid risks that might lead to data breaches, legal disputes, or compromised intellectual property. SCA tools scan a project to identify specific open source versions, correlating this data with the associated licensing information, security vulnerabilities, and remediation options. Advanced SCA tools do this automatically.
Here are the three main use cases for SCA:
Open source software bill of materials (SBOM)
SCA tools generate comprehensive lists that inventory all open source components in the scanned software and containers, including dependencies resolved during build phases. The resulting SBOM includes essential information about all detected open source components.
Open source vulnerability managementÂ
After an SCA tool generates an initial SBOM, it cross-references the detected component versions against various databases listing known open source vulnerabilities, such as the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). It provides information on newly published vulnerabilities that affect previously scanned projects.
Open source license management Â
Open source software provides access to source code and core components of projects, but not all open source software is free to use without restriction. Each project has a unique software license that allows and restricts certain actions. There are numerous open source licenses, each with unique requirements for individual and commercial use. SCA tools can detect the licenses associated with certain open source components within a project to help minimize the risk of licensing non-compliance.Â
See More: Endpoint Security: Why Organizations Need to Move Beyond Signature-based Detection
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is a network architecture that securely connects users, systems, and endpoints by combining cloud-native security technologies (particularly SWG, CASB, ZTNA, and FWaaS) with wide area network (WAN) capabilities. It can be delivered as a service and centrally managed in the cloud to support agile business operations.
There are many reasons to deploy a SASE architecture in a modern enterprise environment. However, the biggest benefit comes from a unified orchestration and management interface for security and network overlay. This provides several benefits, including:
- VPN replacement: VPNs are reliable and secure enough to accommodate cloud access from an exponentially growing number of remote devices, especially as users switch between computers and mobile devices. SASE replaces cumbersome VPNs with digital workspaces managed with zero trust access.
- Support for mobile users: Internet of Things (IoT) devices and desktops, along with a growing mobile workforce, place an increasing burden on IT departments to maintain secure access and consistent wireless performance. As 5G rolls out, IoT and automated wireless endpoint applications will see increased business usage. This requires the scalability and control provided by the unified SASE model.
- Controlled migration to cloud services: Many organizations are moving their data and applications to the cloud, but migration carries many risks and should be managed carefully. SASE provides a single pane of glass that allows IT to move from on-premises to hybrid or multi-cloud environments without compromising workspace availability, application performance or security.
Runtime Application Self-protection (RASP)
RASP security solutions provide personalized protection to runtime applications. This technology examines an application’s state and internal data to identify threats at runtime. The goal is to detect threats that other security tools often overlook to provide more comprehensive coverage and improve security. RASP tools can integrate with various applications.Â
Here are the most common RASP use cases:
- Web application protection: Web applications and APIs are exposed to the public Internet and can include many vulnerabilities, making them vulnerable to numerous attacks. RASP can help protect these applications and APIs and limit the attack surface of an organization’s web-facing infrastructure.
- Zero-day prevention: Most organizations set up measures to ensure they immediately apply patches for critical systems and applications. However, a patch is applied only after the vulnerability is discovered and a patch is developed and released. RASP can protect critical applications against zero-day vulnerabilities.
- Cloud application protection: Cloud security is often complex as these applications are running on leased infrastructure external to the organization’s network perimeter. RASP provides cloud-based applications with a higher level of security in a portable and mainly infrastructure-agnostic form.
Taking Cybersecurity to the Next Level
In conclusion, the next generation of security tools, including extended detection and response (XDR), software composition analysis (SCA), secure access service edge (SASE), and runtime application self-protection (RASP), are set to take cybersecurity to the next level.Â
These tools provide a more comprehensive and proactive approach to security, helping organizations to detect and prevent cyber attacks more effectively and to improve the overall security of their systems and applications.Â
As organizations continue to face increasingly complex and sophisticated threats, the adoption of these next-generation security tools will be essential for protecting sensitive information and maintaining the trust of individuals and businesses in the digital world.
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