Category: Cyber Security Monitoring

Endace Packet Forensics Files: Episode #41

Original Entry by : Michael Morris

Michael talks to Andrew Stewart, Senior National Security and Government Strategist at Cisco

By Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

In this episode of the Endace Packet Forensic files, I talk with Andrew Stewart, Senior National Security and Government Strategist at Cisco.  Andrew, CAPT, USN (Ret.) is a Senior Federal Strategist at Cisco where he implements strategies to support innovative cybersecurity and AI/ML solutions across the Federal Government.  He also served as the Commanding Officer and Program Manager at the Navy Cyber Warfare Development Group (NCWDG).

With Andrew’s deep experience in national security and government agencies, I wanted to get his thoughts on all the new Whitehouse mandates, and cybersecurity policies from CISA such as the emphasis on Zero Trust and other important initiatives.  We discuss whether what organizations are doing is sufficient given the risks posed by nation-state threat actors.

Noting that CISA guidelines and recommendations and Whitehouse mandates can help organizations and agencies prioritize cybersecurity with more urgency than before, Andrew raises the issue of awareness of cybersecurity among executives and corporate boards.  He suggests that, regardless of whether the threat is a nation-state attacker or a ransomware group, a threat-based approach is crucial. He also discusses the importance of building resilience across all “mission” functions, not just day-to-day operations, especially with a remote workforce.  In short,  security resilience is essential to underpin it all.

Lastly, Andrew highlights trends for the coming months – including the ever-changing nature of threats as hybrid cloud operating environments continue to expand the threat spectrum and transform the way we work. Visibility, he says, remains the key to mastering and controlling such a dynamic threat environment.

Other episodes in the Secure Networks video/audio podcast series are available here. Or listen to the podcast here or on your favorite podcast platform.

Endace Packet Forensics Files: Episode #40

Original Entry by : Michael Morris

Michael talks to Chris Greer, Packet Pioneer and Wireshark Guru.

By Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Threat hunting is a critical cybersecurity activity that is growing in importance and prevalence around the globe.  Are your SOC analysts developing the skills and toolsets they need to enable more efficient and effective threat hunting?  What are the inhibitors your teams face and do you have the right tools and processes in place?

In this episode of the Endace Packet Forensic files, I talk with Chris Greer of Packet Pioneer.

Chris is an experienced protocol analyst and forensics expert. He is a renowned instructor for Wireshark University as well as the host of a popular YouTube channel where he shares insights into threat hunting and demonstrates the importance of understanding how to investigate and resolve issues using packet analysis. In this episode, Chris talks about some of the problems or threats you can only see as part of your incident response investigation processes and workflows if you have access to full packet data.

Finally, Chris highlights some of the gaps that organizations have in their security stacks that make it hard for them to confirm or deny false positives and how to resolve this visibility issue. He offers recommendations for training and suggests how to improve your organization’s threat hunting capability.

Other episodes in the Secure Networks video/audio podcast series are available here. Or listen to the podcast here or on your favorite podcast platform.

Endace Packet Forensics Files: Episode #39

Original Entry by : Michael Morris

Michael talks to Justin Fier, VP of Tactical Risk and Response, Darktrace.

By Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

In the current era of extreme geopolitical instability, focus is intensifying on potential nation-state cyberthreats and how governments can defend against nation-states and cyber mercenaries. The increasing threat of nation-state led or sponsored attacks, combined with the massive potential impact of attacks on critical infrastructure are the stuff of nightmares that keep cyberdefenders up at night.

In this episode, I welcome back Justin Fier, VP Tactical Risk and Response at Darktrace (who was our very first guest in this series almost 40 episodes ago!) to talk about nation-state cyber, where he sees the threats lie, and what organizations can do to better prepare for possible attacks.

Justin talks about some of the great work being done by organizations like CISA, and the signs of increased collaboration between nation state defenders as being positive signs that things are moving in the right direction. But there are also significant challenges. Overcoming the slow pace of organizational change, addressing the dearth of skilled cybersecurity professionals, and building the agility to respond to the constantly evolving threat landscape are all major issues that we need to respond to as an industry – whether that’s in government defense or in securing the enterprise.

Lastly, Justin discusses what we need to do to better defend against nation-state and nation-state-sponsored attackers, and puts on his forecasting hat to predict what’s he sees as the most likely threats security teams should focus on over the next year or two.

Other episodes in the Secure Networks video/audio podcast series are available here. Or listen to the podcast here or on your favorite podcast platform.

Endace Packet Forensics Files: Episode #37

Original Entry by : Michael Morris

Michael talks to Rick Jenssen, VP of Global Operations, Plixer

By Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Many organizations face challenges maintaining their security posture while dealing with the significant shift towards remote workforces, the dynamic nature of hybrid cloud environments and rapidly growing volumes of interconnected devices.

In short, managing security at scale in highly fluid environments is a daunting challenge. So what can you do to improve your security resiliency?

In this episode of the Endace Packet Forensic files, I talk with Rick Jenssen, VP of Global Operations for Plixer, who shares his experience into building robust security at scale. Rick recommends some best practices to address the common challenges in delivering resilient security in large environments and talks about ways to address the flood of alarms SOC teams face on a daily basis. He suggests a nice, six-step, iterative approach to continually improving your security position.

Finally, Rick reinforces how important the mantra of “practice, practice, practice” is when it comes to preparing your security teams – and the wider organization. Practicing how to investigate, remediate, and respond to potential security breaches makes sure you know what needs to happen in the event of a real crisis and uncovers areas you need to work on to be better prepared.

Other episodes in the Secure Networks video/audio podcast series are available here.

Endace Packet Forensics Files: Episode #36

Original Entry by : Michael Morris

Michael talks to Neil Wilkins, Technical Director EMEA, Garland Technology

By Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

What does it mean to have security at scale?  For large infrastructures with rapid data growth have you maintained or improved your security posture as you have scaled?

In this episode of the Endace Packet Forensic files I talk with Neil Wilkins, Technical Director for EMEA at Garland Technology, who outlines some of the challenges he sees organizations facing when it comes to maintaining security at scale.  He shares some recommendations and best practices to get on the right path to improve security in large environments.

Finally, Neil shares his thoughts on Security Orchestration and Automation Response (SOAR) platforms and how they can help in environments with lots of tools and events and multiple teams trying to manage the cyber security infrastructure. He provides suggestions for rolling out SOAR solutions and highlights some things to avoid to ensure the platform delivers the returns and efficiencies hoped for.

Having a large, dynamic infrastructure doesn’t mean you can’t keep your arms around your security posture, but you need to have processes and tools in place that can scale as you grow and accelerate incident response to keep ahead of growing threat volumes.

Other episodes in the Secure Networks video/audio podcast series are available here.

Making Packet Forensics Easy

Original Entry by : Cary Wright

Extracting files and other information from recorded packet data

By Cary Wright, VP Product Management, Endace

Cary Wright, VP Product Management, EndaceRecorded network traffic often holds vital clues required to resolve serious Cyber Incidents, or difficult network or application issues. The challenge has been locating a packet guru with the skills to search and analyse recorded traffic to extract the vital evidence needed to resolve the issue at hand. Such skilful analysts can be a rare breed, so we have taken that expertise and packaged it into our latest EndaceProbe software.

Recorded network traffic is now faster to search from within existing security tools such as SIEM or SOAR, and extraction of files and other important information can be done by any team member with the click of a mouse.

Getting to the Packets Faster

Our integrations with partner solutions focus on making it quicker and easier for analysts to find and analyze the packet data they need to investigate and resolve incidents.

Analysts can go from an issue or alert in their security or performance monitoring tools directly to the related packet data in InvestigationManager™ with a click of the mouse. That can save hours of time extracting, downloading and carving-up massive .pcap files so they can be opened up in Wireshark®.

With EndaceVision, analysts can rapidly zoom the timeline in-and-out to look at pre-cursor or post event activity to understand the full scope of any event or alert. Analysis of packet data is done on EndaceProbe appliances at the place it was recorded using hosted Wireshark without having to download or transfer large .pcap files across your network.

Making packet data even more useful

In the past packet analysis has required deep expertise and experience with tools like Wireshark or Zeek used to extract essential information from the recorded packet data. This has made it difficult for less experienced analysts to extract value from packet data and often meant issues requiring packet forensics piled up on the desks of senior analysts to investigate.

With our latest software release (OSm 7.1), we’ve made it easy for even junior analysts to extract useful information from recorded packet data without requiring deep knowledge of packet structures and decode tools. Simply select traffic of interest in EndaceVision and with a single click extract malicious files, or generate detailed log data from all the selected packets. This makes investigating historical events fast, and far more efficient. And it does not require deep expertise – which means even junior analysts can perform packet forensics tasks.

Some examples of tasks that are made easier with the latest Endace software release include:

  • Reconstructing malware file downloads or transfers so you can submit them to a sandbox or virus tool.
  • Understanding exactly what data left your network by reconstructing file exfiltration events.
  • Easily generating logs from recorded traffic to look for things like unusual DNS activity, port scans, DDoS events, or other threatening activity.

See how easy this is in the short 10 minute demonstration below (file extraction is at 08:15):

For more information on these great new features, or to arrange a demonstration to show how Endace could help you, contact us.

Multi-Tenancy introduced with OSm 7.1

Original Entry by : Cary Wright

Securely sharing packet capture infrastructure across multiple entities

By Cary Wright, VP Product Management, Endace

Cary Wright, VP Product Management, EndaceWe are proud to announce that EndaceProbe now supports Multi-Tenancy, “Woo-hoo” I hear you say! If you are an MSPP, MDR, Service Provider, or organisation with multiple departments, your SoC teams can now reap the benefits of having access to weeks or months of continuously recorded network traffic whilst sharing costs with many other likeminded SoC teams. Let’s dig into what Multi-Tenancy is and why it’s important.

At the most basic level, Multi-Tenancy is the ability to host multiple “entities” (e.g. multiple customers or multiple organizational divisions) on a single architecture at the same time. To put it another way, Multi-Tenancy offers a way to share the costs of a system or service across more than one entity. Multi-tenancy can mean different things depending on your domain of expertise:

  • Cloud providers are inherently multi-tenanted, serving millions of clients with shared compute
  • Operating systems often host multiple tenants on a single machine
  • Networks can supply connectivity to multiple teams or organizations via a single infrastructure.

All these scenarios have these necessary requirements in common:

  1. Each tenant’s data must remain private and accessible to only that authorized tenant, and
  2. Each tenant needs access to reliable, predictable, or contracted resources – such as bandwidth, compute, storage, security services, expertise, etc.

Multi-tenancy can help organizations to scale critical security services in a cost-efficient manner. A capable security architecture/service requires a significant capability investment and the expertise to operate it. By enabling this investment to be shared, it enables services to be made available to organizations that might otherwise not have been able to afford them.

A good example of where Multi-Tenancy can be extremely useful is the Security Operations Center (SoC). Typically, only large, well-funded organisations have the resources to build their own dedicated SoC. Multi-tenancy can enable multiple organizations to share a SoC, each benefiting from a strengthened security posture without carrying the full burden of the costs and effort involved.

This is the model underpinning outsourced MSSP services, for example. But it can also be an ideal model for larger organizations with multiple divisions that each need to maintain separation from each other. Or where multiple individual companies are owned by a common parent. It can also be a useful way to safely isolate a newly acquired company until its systems can be safely migrated or transferred over to the new owner’s infrastructure.

We see lots of areas where organizations are benefiting from this ability to  share infrastructure and services. So we are very pleased to announce that with the new OSm 7.1 software release, EndaceProbe Analytics Platform now also supports Multi-Tenancy for network recording.

This is especially useful where multiple tenants share the same network. A single EndaceProbe, or a fabric of EndaceProbes, can now be securely shared across multiple different organisations or tenants, while keeping the data for each tenant secure and private. EndaceProbes continuously record all network data on the shared network, but only provide each tenant with access to their own data.

In this case the tenancies are defined by VLANs, where each tenant has a VLAN, or set of VLANs, that carries only their traffic. When a user needs to investigate a security threat in their tenancy, they simply log into InvestigationManager to search, inspect, and analyse only the traffic that belongs to that tenancy. It’s as if each tenant has its own, wholly separate, EndaceFabric, dedicated just to its own tenancy.

This new capability is important for large organisations that service multiple departments, agencies, or divisions. Service providers, MSPPs, and MDRs which service multiple clients will also benefit from Multi-Tenancy to give each of its clients ready access to its own recorded network traffic for fast, secure, and private, security incident response.

We are very excited that this new Multi-Tenancy feature can help make Network Recording accessible for many more organizations, helping them to resolve incidents faster and with greater confidence.

For more information on this great new feature, or to arrange a demonstration to show how Endace could help you, contact us.