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Cybersecurity Time Machine Series: Solutions Through the Years

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By: Brittany Holmes, Corporate Communications Manager 

Cybersecurity has rapidly transformed in protecting valuable data and systems from malicious threat actors. From its inception as a simple notion of secure protocols to the complex and sophisticated solutions of the present day, the journey of cybersecurity has been nothing short of extraordinary.  

This year’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month’s theme celebrates 20 Years of Cybersecurity Awareness. In relevance, we took you through the evolution of threat actors over the past two decades in Cybersecurity Time Machine Series: The Evolution of Threat Actors to showcase the complexity of the threat landscape. Now, we explore the past 20 years’ advancement of cybersecurity solutions, tracking its progress through various stages and highlighting the milestones that have shaped its current landscape. 

Cybersecurity: The Early Years (2000-2005) 

A digital revolution was underway in the early years of the new millennium. This era saw the rise of antivirus software, emerging as the first line of defense against malicious software and cyber threats. This development was accompanied by firewalls, protecting the digital boundaries of networks and systems.  

However, understanding cyber threats and vulnerabilities was limited, exposing organizations to unknown dangers. Comprehensive cybersecurity strategies were absent within this landscape, leaving organizations struggling to navigate this deep digital landscape. These early years were marked by a race against time to understand and combat the threat landscape. 

Increased Awareness: Mid-2000s (2006-2010) 

In the mid-2000s, a sense of unease began to settle over the digital landscape. Organizations were becoming increasingly aware of the lurking threat of cyberattacks, launching a new era of caution and vigilance. As the world connected and information flowed freely on the Internet, the need for protection became essential. This is where there were intrusion detection systems, powerful gatekeepers that tirelessly monitored network traffic, searching for any signs of malicious intent.  

Simultaneously, encryption technologies created shields around sensitive data and communications. However, as defenses strengthened, so did the adversaries. Cybercriminals grew increasingly sophisticated, their tactics to match the advancing digital landscape. These developments raised the stakes. 

Introduction of Behavior-Based Threat Detection (2010-2015) 

Between 2010 and 2015, traditional reactive approaches were gradually replaced by innovative strategies to stay one step ahead of threat actors. With the introduction of behavior-based threat detection, security experts began analyzing patterns and anomalies to anticipate potential attacks, neutralizing them before any damage could occur.  

As technology advanced, cloud-based security solutions emerged as a game-changer, providing organizations with scalable, efficient, and cost-effective protection against rapidly changing threats. Machine learning and artificial intelligence brought a new era, empowering cybersecurity systems to continually learn, adapt, and predict potential vulnerabilities with uncanny accuracy.  

These developments heightened the level of defense and brought about a sense of assurance, as organizations were armed with proactive measures to safeguard their digital assets. With these advancements, the world of cybersecurity was forever transformed, nurturing a future where staying secure is no longer a question of luck but rather a matter of strategic planning and cutting-edge technology. 

Cybersecurity in Recent Years (2016-2020) 

Cybersecurity has witnessed significant advancements and transformations in recent years that have revolutionized how organizations approach data protection and privacy strategies. One crucial development that has taken center stage is the focus on endpoint security. With the rise of remote work and the spread of devices connected to corporate networks, organizations are investing in endpoint security solutions to safeguard their data from threats. 

However, not just endpoint security has gained traction. The importance of data protection has sparked a shift in how organizations handle and secure their sensitive information. In a world where data breaches and leaks regularly make headlines, organizations are under increasing pressure to implement strict data privacy policies and deploy protection mechanisms to safeguard customer and employee data. 

Additionally, the evolution of threat intelligence platforms has played a crucial role in cyber threats. These platforms actively collect, analyze, and interpret vast amounts of data from various sources, allowing organizations to stay one step ahead of cybercriminals. Machine learning, artificial intelligence, and threat intelligence platforms can promptly identify and respond to emerging cyber threats, minimizing potential damage and downtime. 

Examples of Solutions in Recent Years:

  • Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR): EDR continually monitors an endpoint (laptop, tablet, mobile phone, server, or internet-of-things device) to identify threats through data analytics and prevent malicious activity with rules-based automated response capabilities.
  • Managed Detection and Response (MDR): In response to a growing portfolio of security products, organizations turned to Managed Security Service Providers (MSSP) to manage these devices, update and patch systems, aggregate information, and provide frequent reporting. MSSPs manage devices, whereas customers also need a service to manage alerts, investigate threats, and contain attacks. MDR provides a turnkey combination of tools and security expertise to protect clients from cyber threats.
  • Extended Detection and Response (XDR): XDR collects security data from network points, operating systems logs, application logs, cloud services, endpoints, and other logging systems to correlate information and apply threat detection analytics to this data lake of information.  

To find the best solution for your organization, explore comparison guides like EDR vs. XDR vs. MDR: The Cybersecurity ABCs Explained.  

Current and Future Cybersecurity Solution Trends (2021-Present) 

Several key cybersecurity solution trends are gaining traction as we move into the future. The adoption of zero-trust architecture is rapidly growing, with organizations realizing that traditional perimeter-based security is no longer sufficient. This approach focuses on granting access based on authentication and authorization, regardless of the user’s location or device, effectively minimizing the potential for breaches.  

Advanced analytics and automation tools are increasingly integrated to enhance threat detection and response capabilities. These technologies provide real-time insights into potential threats, allowing faster and more efficient incident response. Additionally, there is a noticeable shift towards decentralized cybersecurity, with organizations opting for distributed security measures instead of relying solely on centralized systems.  

The rise of emerging technologies like 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT) presents both opportunities and challenges for cybersecurity. While these technologies offer immense benefits, they also expand the attack surface, requiring security measures to be implemented alongside their deployment. The future of cybersecurity lies in these trends, allowing organizations to proactively protect their digital assets while harnessing the full potential of technology.  


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Shadows to the Light: The Key Role of Visibility in Strengthening Cybersecurity

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By: Mark Sangster, VP, Chief of Strategy


Visibility in Three Parts: Part 1


Fiat Lux: Lighting the Way to Cybersecurity

Detection is key in many aspects of life, from medical diagnosis to positive treatment to more existential threats posed by massive storms like hurricanes or destructive tornadoes. The quicker we can detect something threatening or dangerous, the sooner we can respond accordingly. While we take this for granted in everyday life, we don’t always appreciate the value of early detection in cybersecurity. Put another way, making cyber threats visible is key to mitigating the risk.

This three-part blog series focuses on how we bring light to the threats and make them visible. In this series, I will explore what we mean by visibility in terms of cybersecurity, methods to detect or make visible threats, and how to measure your ability to detect and respond to those threats, measured in terms of business outcomes.

Part I: There is More to This Than Meets the Eye

When it comes to understanding the meaning of this statement, astronomy is a good teacher. Throughout the ages, scientists and novices alike have stared into the night skies, seeking answers. They looked to understand the celestial motions to predict the season for agriculture, suitable times for trade and travel, or simply to understand the world around them. Until the invention of the telescope in the early 1600s1 only six planets in our solar system were visible. Not nearly 200 years later, advances in telescope lenses aided William Hershel in discovering a seventh planet, Uranus.

Yet observers of this planet were perplexed that the Newtonian physics thought to govern the motion of the planets could not account for certain anomalies in Uranus’ orbit. Astronomers predicted the presence of another planet that would explain these perturbations. In 1846, advances in telescope acuity and predictive orbital calculations led to the discovery of Neptune. Yet it wasn’t until 1989 that Voyager 2’ flyby discovered additional moons and dark rings that orbit the blue gas giant.2

The Power of Visibility in Cybersecurity

Lesson 1: The Need for Tools

There are two critical lessons from this brief history of planetary discovery. The first is that there is more to this than meets the eye. We need to develop tools and instruments to detect invisible objects. As thriller author Chris Pavone mused, “The best hiding spots are not the most hidden; they’re merely the least searched.3

In terms of cybersecurity, we develop new instruments to detect threats year after year. Firewalls, antivirus, endpoint detection and response, and so on. Each technology provides a set of detection capabilities that overlap the least searched locations, as Pavone suggests.

Lesson 2: The Presence of Inferential Threats

The second lesson is that not everything is obvious to the naked eye, even with the help of a telescope or similar augmentation of acuity. Consider another comparison to visible light. The portion of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum that our eyes can detect is visible light.4 Yet this visible portion of the EM spectrum accounts for about 0.0035 percent of its entirety. The vast majority remains invisible. Our eyes cannot detect radio or microwaves or see infrared or ultraviolet light or X-rays.

Yet we can hear radio waves when captured by a sensor and converted into sound waves. We use microwaves to heat food. We can feel the heat of infrared and ultraviolet light, leading to sunburn when skin is unprotected. And X-ray imaging is a staple of medical care. We can’t see these forms of EM energy, but we can infer their presence from secondary evidence.

That’s the second lesson: not all cybersecurity threats are obvious or come in the form of an alert thrown by a firewall, endpoint defense, or antivirus. Those obvious threats like spam emails or messages from streaming services about declined payments are the background radiation of the internet. While primarily harmless at this point, they have the negative consequence of lulling too many pre-victims into a false sense of security.

Harnessing Implicit and Inferential Detections

Many threats are inferential, they don’t elicit an alert. They are the signals hiding in Pavone’s “least searched spots.” For example, most attacks begin with compromised credentials accessing security controls to create the appearance of legitimate activity. Credentials that were stolen using subtle phishing lures like student requests for mentoring or notification of fake lawsuits.

Once in, criminals use compromised accounts and devices to map your network, connect to critical services to identify valuable assets, and even create new user accounts in Active Directory. Lateral movement, privilege escalation, reconnaissance, staging, and more are all precursors to attacks. In many cases, these events go undetected. And these activities traverse your remote access gateways. Using your tools against you is a broad category of tactics called “living off the land.”

Leveraging Threat Hunting and Artificial Intelligence

Creating a robust cybersecurity defense requires multiple, overlapping sources that cover your entire attack surface. Full spectrum coverage includes more than internet traffic, endpoints and in-network communications, and cloud-service access. It’s covering remote access points and correlating those data points to create a contextual fabric of visibility: who is accessing what and why. Beyond tactical visibility, your attack surface includes vulnerability management and patching, simulated attacks, asset discovery, and security awareness programs.

Detecting these threats requires line speed analysis of network traffic and the correlation of users, groups, devices, and systems. It means collecting enormous volumes of data, normalizing and aggregating the data, and then analyzing it as fast as criminals can move inside your environment.

Of course, like light, the more security information you collect, the harder it is to focus the data to create a big picture. As you open the security aperture, the resource load is almost exponential. Most security teams will attest that exhausted resources and diminished budgets are no match for increasing cyber threats and growing regulatory requirements.

Up Next: Parts 2 & 3

In the next part of the series, we will explore how we harness implicit and inferential detections, use threat hunting to take the fight to the adversary and employ artificial intelligence to manage alert overload and spot invisible threats.

For more information about why implementing proactive security measures is essential to visibility, download “The Executive’s Guide to Cybersecurity.”


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The LifeLong Customer: Navigating Cybersecurity's Seas of Trust and Growth with Robert Johnston, CEO at Adlumin

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Join host Brad Hammond in this episode of the Lifelong Customer podcast, as he dives into a conversation with Robert Johnston, CEO of Adlumin. A former Marine with a strong cybersecurity background, Robert shares the genesis of Adlumin and its transition from military operations to private sector entrepreneurship.

Explore the vital role of cybersecurity in today’s digital landscape and how Adlumin revolutionizes security operations with its unique command center approach. Robert discusses the company’s market niche and the effectiveness of a channel-based go-to-market strategy. Gain insights into Adlumin’s growth journey from humble beginnings to a significant industry player, all while prioritizing customer value.

This episode offers a wealth of advice, from navigating product-market fit challenges to transitioning from founder-led efforts to professional management—a must-listen for those navigating the complex waters of cybersecurity entrepreneurship.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Adlumin Unveils Warranty and Cyber Insurance Offerings that Make Coverage Attainable and Affordable for Previously Unprotected Small and Mid-Sized Organizations

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Adlumin Protection Plus Suite receives Cysurance Certification to Provide Low Friction Path to Complementary Financial Protection

WASHINGTON – September 12, 2023 – Adlumin, the security operations platform and managed detection and response (MDR) service provider keeping mid-market organizations secure, today announced a new warranty program that provides up to $500,000 of financial protection at no cost to customers who qualify. The warranty comes as a result of a third-party testing and certification program by Cysurance, a next-generation risk mitigation company that insures, warranties and certifies security solutions. The Cysurance Certification Program enables Adlumin to offer customers significant discounts on cyber insurance policies.

Together these new offerings provide a low-friction path to attaining complementary financial protection for small and mid-sized organizations who often struggle to find coverage that fits their needs. The Adlumin Protect Warranty enables organizations to qualify for cyber insurance at a lower premium, while also providing fast reimbursement in the event of an incident, and financial resources to support operations before an organization meets its cyber insurance deductible. For organizations covered by Adlumin Protect Warranty, approved payments or agreed remediation will begin 48 hours after verification of a cybersecurity incident.

“Skyrocketing cyber claims, growing security complexity and exploding insurance premiums are pricing small to mid-market organizations out of insurance protection, leaving them exposed to crippling financial impact of cyberattacks,” said Mark Sangster, cybersecurity author and Adlumin Chief of Strategy. “We founded Adlumin to give these organizations the enterprise-grade resources they need and deserve, and these new financial protections build another layer on top of the security operations platform, managed detection and response services, and incident response services we’re already providing. Partnering with an industry leader like Cysurance is one more way we’re bringing top-tier resources to organizations of all sizes.”

Organizations that subscribe to the Adlumin Protection Plus Suite automatically qualify for $500,000 in warranty coverage at no charge, and are eligible for significantly discounted cyber insurance premiums from Cysurance.

“We are in a challenging landscape for small and midsized organizations. Security spending, breaches, and insurance premiums are on the rise, but coverage is becoming more limited and difficult to obtain. Our mission at Cysurance is to verify the proficiency of security operations and expedite the path to coverage,” said Kirsten Bay, CEO at Cysurance. “Establishing certification and coverage for cybersecurity providers, like Adlumin brings a new level of sophistication and assurance to organizations of all sizes. Cysurance-certified providers meet the most stringent requirements demanded by underwriters of risks associated with hardware, software, infrastructure, and security services. That is why we can offer Adlumin customers a streamlined path to insurance coverage and discounted policies.”

Adlumin Protect is a low-friction certification warranty designed to safeguard Adlumin customers against business continuity and insure against loss, protecting their revenue and recovery. It builds on the company’s vision to provide a single platform that equips organizations with full visibility and the tools required to combat cybersecurity threats. For more information on Adlumin Protect Warranty, visit https://adlumin.com/resource/adlumin-protect-warranty/.

About Cysurance
Cysurance is a next-generation risk mitigation company that insures, warranties and certifies security solutions. Cysurance-certified partners meet the most stringent requirements demanded by underwriters of risks associated with hardware, software, infrastructure, and security services deployed by enterprises across all industries and geographies. Cysurance-certified offerings minimize vulnerabilities faced by public, private, and non-profit leaders. The company dynamically ensures adherence to the constantly evolving best practices for enterprise security, through an integrated ecosystem of solution providers who work seamlessly together to cost-effectively optimize the resilience of organizations. All insurance products and services are offered by Cysurance, a licensed producer.

About Adlumin
Adlumin Inc. provides the enterprise-grade security operations platform and managed detection and response services that keep mid-market organizations secure. With one license and one platform, its patented technology gives organizations and solution providers everything they need for effective threat hunting, incident response, vulnerability management, darknet exposure monitoring, compliance support and much more. www.adlumin.com

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Adlumin Contact:
Mike Reilly
fama PR for Adlumin
adlumin@famapr.com

Understanding the Fine Print: Cybersecurity Insurance vs. Warranties

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By: Brittany Holmes, Corporate Communications Manager

The rise in cybercrimes and attacks has reached an alarming rate, putting organizations at risk of losing sensitive information and digital assets. The need to remain protected against these threats has led to the adoption of two key tools: cybersecurity insurance and cybersecurity warranties. While both aim to strengthen defense mechanisms, their approach to ensuring protection differs.

Adlumin’s latest Cyber Threat Insights report highlights a 20% surge in security threat detections, further emphasizing the importance of these tools in safeguarding businesses and organizations. But what exactly do these terms entail, and how do they differ in ensuring protection?

This blog covers cybersecurity insurance and warranties, unveiling the key distinctions and highlighting their role in safeguarding against cyber threats that lurk in the dark.

Understanding Cybersecurity Insurance

Cybersecurity insurance, also known as cyber insurance, cyber liability insurance, or cyber risk insurance, provides financial protection and assistance to organizations in the event of a ransomware attack, data breach, or any other form of cyberattack. It is designed to address the frequency and complexity of cyber threats and the potential financial losses that can result from them. Organizations purchase a contract where the organization’s liability for financial damages is minimized, alleviating the overall consequences if an incident occurs.

What does it protect against?

Cyber insurance covers any type of theft, compromise, or loss of electronic data that negatively impacts an organization. It can help reduce financial risk and keep an organization from paying out of pocket. Any organization that stores, manages, or creates electronic data can benefit from cyber insurance. Sensitive information like customer login information, social security numbers, contact numbers, or any personally identifiable information are all targets for cybercriminals.

Benefits of Cybersecurity Insurance: 

  • Financial protection against losses
  • Assistance in incident response and recovery
  • Access to specialist resources and expertise

Exploring Cybersecurity Warranties

A cybersecurity warranty or cyber warranty can be described as when a provider guarantees they will pay a certain amount if their customer experiences a breach or incident. The purpose is to instill confidence in customers that their product or service has undergone rigorous testing and meets security standards. It helps mitigate the risks associated with cyberattacks and provides a form of assurance that the provider will take responsibility in the event of a security breach.

The conditions for a warranty vary based on the provider; some will expect the customer to abide by a set of security standards to be covered by their contract, or some expect the customer to prove that they were using the product or both. The losses a warranty can cover can vary, but they are typically a set amount.  

What does it protect against?

Cybersecurity warranties cover various events, including: 

  • Legal Liability: The warranty may cover the costs of letting the individuals affected by a data breach know and the legal expenses related to potential lawsuits. 
  • Business Interruption: The warranty may cover the losses resulting from business interruption, including revenue loss, extra expenses incurred, and reputational damage.
  • Compliance Event: If a compliance event results in a breach of applicable regulations or standards, a cybersecurity warranty may cover the costs of fines and penalties imposed by regulatory authorities.
  • Ransomware/Business Email Compromise: ransomware, including payouts for ransoms or business email compromise, resulting in financial loss.  

It is important to note that a cybersecurity warranty’s specific coverage and terms may vary depending on the policy and the provider. 

Benefits of Cybersecurity Warranties: 

  • Compliance support 
  • Customer trust 
  • Enhanced security 
  • Liability transfer 
  • Risk mitigation

Understanding the Fine Print: Cybersecurity Insurance vs. Warranties 

While cybersecurity warranties can function well with cybersecurity insurance, they are not alternatives for each other. Instead, they are complementary. Warranties have more limitations than insurance, but they fill in the gaps in situations where insurers won’t pay out. For example, having a cybersecurity warranty in place may assist in reducing insurance premiums. They are both tools designed to mitigate the financial risk associated with cyberattacks and data breaches.  

While cybersecurity insurance and warranties serve different functions, they go hand in hand with a comprehensive risk management strategy. Cybersecurity insurance helps organizations transfer the financial risks associated with cyber incidents to an insurance provider, while warranties provide an additional layer of assurance that the products or services being used have met certain security standards.  

For example, if a breach occurs despite the organization implementing robust cybersecurity measures, cybersecurity insurance and warranties can cover the costs of incident response, legal expenses, and any financial losses. Together, they can help organizations mitigate potential financial losses and give them peace of mind knowing that they have protection against cyber threats. 

The Ultimate Protection Complement  

By combining cybersecurity insurance and warranties, organizations can ensure comprehensive coverage and minimize their financial exposure in the event of a cyber incident. It is important for organizations to carefully assess their cybersecurity risks, evaluate the warranties provided by vendors, and work with insurance providers to customize a cybersecurity insurance policy that suits their specific needs and risk profile.

Let’s Get Started 

Learn more about how Adlumin Protect Warranty Certification can safeguard you against business continuity and insure against loss, protecting your revenue and recovery. 

Contact us today, schedule a demo, or sign up for a free trial. 

5 Cybersecurity Trends Still on the Rise

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By: Brittany Demendi, Corporate Communications Manager at Adlumin

As summer begins to wind down and we hit the mid-year mark, it is becoming increasingly evident that the cybersecurity industry continues to experience transformational shifts. In the face of persistent threats and sophisticated attacks businesses must adapt to the changes to strengthen their defense mechanisms.

Despite the various challenges brought forth by the ever-advancing technological world, one thing remains constant—cybersecurity’s critical importance is safeguarding our digital assets and personal information. As the digital landscape continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, remaining vigilant is the key component to staying ahead of the cybercrime curve.

This blog explores five key cybersecurity trends that are still on the rise, shaping the way we approach digital security and setting the tone for the months to come.

  1. Cybersecurity Spending: According to ESG research, 65% of organizations planned to increase their budgets this year. While budgets are tightening, cybersecurity spending is still on the rise. In the past few years, cybersecurity has become a boardroom topic. Cyber threats continue to impact organizations on a daily basis and the awareness of these issues is prevalent. Companies understand the criticality of keeping customer and business data secure and investment in cybersecurity has become non-negotiable and often needed for compliance.
  2. Cloud-Based Attacks: Organizations have adapted to servicing customers through apps to employees working remotely, increasing the attack surface for adversaries. Most organizations store their data in the cloud and as a result, cybercriminals are focusing on the cloud as the main target for attacks. The key to managing cloud risk is being able to identify when user activity deviates from normal matters. This can be accomplished by investing in a solution with User Entity and Behavior Analytics and one that will ingest security signals from your productivity tools.
  3. Machine Learning Based Detections: To keep up with the sophistication and growing threat landscape, machine learning is becoming a key capability in cybersecurity. Machine learning goes beyond signature-based detection methods to identify advanced tactics cybercriminal are leveraging to bypass detection. Embracing machine learning in cybersecurity solutions is a necessary step in staying ahead of ever-evolving cyber threats.
  4. Insider Threats: This emerging challenge his emerging challenge is sometimes misunderstood. While it could be a disgruntled employee posting sensitive information, we’re referring to human error that occurs internally. According to VentureBeat, “one out of every five breaches, 19%, originate from the inside.” Whether it is an employee accidentally leaking passwords credentials or downloading malware without realizing it, not following security protocols leaves sensitive data at risk. Investing in security awareness training is essential to educating employees to better protect against this risk.
  5. Business Email Compromise (BEC) Attacks: BEC continues to be one of the top ways attackers steal information, achieve financial gains, and find their way into an organization. It works because it involves a human element. They trick and deceive users into taking harmful actions, sharing sensitive information or providing monetary gains. An AFP report also shared “evidence that BEC remains a problem, with 71% of organizations experienced an attempted or actual BEC attack in 2022. That’s up 3 percentage points from 2021, but still off the 2018 high mark of 80%.” Security professionals must focus on educating employees to gain awareness and recognize these techniques to defend against BEC attacks.

Command More Visibility

The trends above only represent a small portion of what the industry is up against and opportunities to take hold of. The key is to take all we know about cybersecurity and apply them fully to our current security programs. Knowledge is only the halfway point to winning the battle and implementing a proactive security approach is important to defend against common trends.

Amidst these escalating threats, Managed Detection and Response (MDR) providers play a pivotal role in defending organizations. Investing in a solution that provides full visibility across your environment, provides insight into policy violations, and takes a multi-layered detection approach that looks at your extended threat landscape will enable organizations to keep up with the latest trends. Investing in MDR can be an extension of your team and provide valuable threat insights to prepare for and protect against the evolving threat landscape.

How Automation Makes Cybersecurity Faster and Smarter: The Pros and Cons

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By: Will Ledesma, MDR Cybersecurity Director 

The world of automation is fully upon us. We as humans want things faster, quicker, and cleaner, with trust in actions taken by computers. All too often, we see in the movies lighting speed actions happening in real-time. Is this real? In essence, we can see automation everywhere, from ordering food at a kiosk to robots making food and beverages. So how has automation taken a foothold in cybersecurity?

The concept of automation often bleeds into the artificial intelligence (AI) world. Where AI makes decisions based on a number of technologies and learned variables. In principle, automation also makes these same types of decisions, but it’s based on rules and patterns. Nonetheless, in cybersecurity, automation is only as smart as we make it. The cyber-world is colossal, and different teams and operations can all use automation in different ways.

This blog concentrates on automation in a Security Operation Center (SOC) and the pros and cons of automation used in cybersecurity.

How is Automation Being Used in Cybersecurity?

In cybersecurity, specifically Adlumin, automation monitors, audits, detects, responds, and/or prevents malicious activities against multiple technologies. One of the main challenges in the cybersecurity world is burnout. By using automation, a Security Operations Center (SOC) team can quickly scale up their operations. For example, automation helps reduce analyst fatigue. Plus provides the tools to quickly identify, contain, and respond to malicious activity. It streamlines mundane, labor-intensive tasks that would’ve otherwise required manual effort. Automation reduces the time for threat detection and provides response capabilities across an organization’s technology set. In addition, automation helps reduce costs associated with manual processes and investigations; by detecting and containing threats such as malware, phishing emails, and malicious code.

Now that we’ve covered its use let’s look at the pros and cons.

The Pros of Cybersecurity Automation

Simply put, as mentioned above, automation reduces the time for threat detection and containment. Furthermore, automation can pinpoint threats that the human eye may miss. Within Adlumin’s Security Operations Center’s (SOC) team, automation is used by taking the mindset of a Tier 3 (expert SOC analyst) and scaling that into playbooks to where automation is then inserted to make machine time-to-machine time decisions. This way, an attack can be stopped in machine time, thus denying a threat of further spreading.

Use Case: Automation Block Ingested into Next-Generation Firewall Systems

For this use case, we will examine an automation playbook that is being utilized to create IP blocklists for next-generation firewall systems (NGFW). In the past, SOCs had to have subject matter experts (SME) that knew a slew of technologies. Using automation, we have removed the need for a dedicated SME that knows how to create network objects, apply that to a network policy, ensure that it has been set to memory, and, most importantly, we have reduced the risk surface area. No longer must a company open additional vectors into its network for SOC SMEs. In addition, a customer drops the risk of worrying about the account management headache that comes with having to give credentials to outside-the-organization users or even depending on a third-party company that requires change request nightmares. Adlumin’s automation can implement a blocklist inseconds versus minutes, hours, or even days.

In addition to automation serving as an additional defender alongside cyber defense warriors, it also helps reduce mean time to remediation (MTTR), thus reducing service level agreements (SLA). Automation will also grab key intel artifacts and inject those in machine time into Adlumin for an analyst to utilize on a single pane of glass. Thus, reducing time to clicks instead of needing to go to additional outside sources.

The Cons of Cybersecurity Automation

The cons of cybersecurity automation are that threat actors are now also using automation within their attack playbooks. The playing field has been reduced in terms of expertise from attackers. Now a team can have one lead that creates and distributes a malicious weapon set to where other attackers can point and click on what they want to attack. Even here at Adlumin, our red teams are using automation in their attacks to brute force their way into systems.

Due to attacks now moving at lightning speeds, defenses must be able to keep up, and automation clearly is the key. For those possibly thinking otherwise, consider this, a leader approaches you and states, “Why am I going to invest in an employee if they’re just going to leave,” where a great response would be, “But what if we don’t invest in them and they never leave?” The same is true for automation in the world of cybersecurity.

Illuminate Threats and Eliminate Risks

Learn more about how Adlumin’s Managed Detection and Response Services and Security Operations Platform can empower your team to illuminate threats, eliminate cyber risk, and command authority. Contact us today, schedule a demo, or sign-up for a free trial.

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