Endace Packet Forensics Files: Episode #26

Original Entry by : Michael Morris

Michael talks to Pavel Minarik, CTO of Kemp Technologies

By Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Many organizations are undertaking SOC and NOC modernizations, but what does this mean and what is driving it?

If your company is planning a “modernization” you won’t want to miss this episode of the Endace Packet Forensic files as Pavel Minarik, CTO of Kemp Technologies, talks about what’s important and what is fueling the need to modernize.

Pavel gives his insights into some of the biggest challenges NOCs and SOCs are facing and shares some tips to help these separate teams work together and collaborate more.  He underscores why this is becoming more important with increasing network complexity, virtualization, and escalating threat attack vectors.

Finally, Pavel talks about why network traffic is such a foundational data source for both NoCs and SoCs and the pros and cons of flow-based monitoring vs full packet monitoring. He shares the best practices analysts are adopting to become improve investigation efficiency and reduce incident response times.

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

Endace Turns 20!!

Original Entry by : Mark Evans
July was a significant milestone for Endace. We celebrated two whole decades in business and the start of our 21st year!

Read on to find out how we’re marking the occasion …

The Last 20 Years

Back in 2001, when Endace was founded, Russell Crowe (another famous New Zealander) won an Oscar for Gladiator, internet users were dreaming about fast, new 56K modems, Microsoft launched Windows XP, and the first Lord of the Rings movie (The Fellowship of the Ring) was launched. So long ago!

What’s amazing is that in the 20 years since, Endace has continued to work with some of our first ever customers! And many of the original Endace team, including Endace CTO, Stephen Donnelly, are still with us today too.

But much has changed over that time. We’ve seen network speeds increase from the early 10Mbps LAN speeds to today’s backbone speeds of 100Gbps and beyond. Traffic volumes have increased exponentially too with global internet traffic estimated to total 4.8 zettabytes in 2021.

Over the last twenty years, packet capture has gone from being a niche technology predominantly used by telcos, service providers, and governments to what is now a ubiquitous and essential capability for organizations to ensure the security and performance of their critical networks.

Endace has continued to stay ahead of the changes, setting industry benchmarks for performance, capacity and reliability with our multi-award-winning EndaceProbe Analytics Platform. Our technology becomes more and more important every day because of the challenges organizations face in defending against cyber threats and ensuring their critical networks are available 24x7x365.

 

That Endace is still going strong after 20 years is a testament to a really smart team, and the strength of our relationships with our customers and partners. We are extremely grateful for your unwavering support and loyalty. Thank you!

Stuart Wilson, CEO.

A Year of Giving Back

We elected a team of Endace people from around the world to decide how we should celebrate our 20th Anniversary. The universal feedback they received was that everyone wanted to mark the occasion by “giving back” – particularly given the tough times people have been experiencing with Covid around the world.

So charity will form an even bigger part of our focus over the next 12 months than usual. Here are some of the activities the teams have been involved in or are planning:

Endace Corporate Charity

Endace has chosen to support The Glaucoma Foundation by making a corporate donation to support the foundation’s work on glaucoma research and treatment. Given Endace focuses on network visibility we felt working with a global charity that strives to protect human vision was extremely appropriate.

Regional Charities
  • Endace EMEA: continuing a long-term tradition, the EMEA team will be sponsoring MoD Field Gun Run events to raise money for the  Dorothy Hospice.
  • Endace North America: the US team is conducting a run/cycle challenge (recording their performances on Strava) to raise money for St Judes Research Hospital which focuses on children’s health.
  • Endace India: the team in India is funding two food carts, (donated via the Rotary Club of Chennai), to provide an income for two families in need.
  • Endace Australia: the team in Melbourne leveraged their culinary flair, getting together in the FareShare kitchen to cook food that is distributed to needy families via a wide range of charities.
  • Endace New Zealand: the NZ team is planning to volunteer with Sustainable Coastlines, an environmental charity, on beach-cleanup and tree-planting events to protect New Zealand’s waterways.

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Team Celebrations

Endace’s birthday celebrations kicked off with a dinner for the NZ team and ViP guests, including two of the original founders. Appropriately, the dinner was held at the Gallagher Performing Arts Center back where things all got started – at the University of Waikato:

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Each of the Endace teams around the world is conducting celebratory parties in their regions as Covid lockdowns allow.

Here are some of the photos from the UK team’s recent celebration which included completing the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge to climb the three highest peaks in Yorkshire followed by a well-earned drink and dinner.

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We are also capturing photo and video memories from current and ex Endacers, partners and friends, which we’ll continue to share over the next 12 months. Keep a lookout for the #endaceturns20 hashtag on LinkedIn, Twitter and here on the blog.

Packet Detectives Episode 3: Is my video conferencing really secure?

Original Entry by : Michael Morris

Demystifying Network Investigations with Packet Data

By Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

The Covid-19 pandemic has seen us all become all too familiar with video conferencing tools as we’ve switched to work-from-home. Zoom, Webex, GoToMeeting, and Microsoft Teams are all part of our daily work routine now.

We assume that all these services are secure and the content of our web conferencing and collaboration is encrypted and safe from eavesdroppers. But is it really secure? And where is all that data stored anyway?

In this third installment of Packet Detectives, industry-renowned SharkFest presenter and all-round Wireshark guru, Betty DuBois, takes an in-depth look at a web-conferencing session to find the answers to these questions, and shows how you can do the same for the web conferencing tools you use.

We hope you find this video useful. Please let us know if you have ideas for other examples you’d like to see.

Endace Packet Forensics Files: Episode #25

Original Entry by : Michael Morris

Michael talks to David Ellis, VP Sales and Corporate Relations, SecureIQLab

By Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

How does an organization quantify its cybersecurity readiness and robustness?  What does a strong cybersecurity posture look like?  These are questions many CISO and SecOps analysts are trying to figure out so they can sleep at night knowing they are doing all they can to protect their organization’s cyber assets.

In this episode of the Endace Packet Forensic files, I talk with David Ellis, VP of Sales and Corporate Relations for SecureIQLab, who shares his insights into what the SecureIQLab team sees in their role as both a test lab and a security assessment consultancy.

David outlines the elements of a successful security team and what metrics SecOps should be monitoring to quantify their security posture.  He shares common vulnerabilities that he sees many organizations are still facing and the table-stakes that every security team should have in terms of tools, processes, and policies.

Finally, David talks about what frameworks and standards teams should be adopting and what the process for your organization might look like if you want to get into a security audit and assessment.

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

Endace Packet Forensics Files: Episode #24

Original Entry by : Michael Morris

Michael talks to Ajit Thyagarajan, Principal Security Architect for Cisco

By Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

The cybersecurity landscape is constantly changing with new Zero-Day Threats, double-extortion ransomware attacks and continuously evolving phishing techniques. The volume of threats and the pace of change are impacting the way SecOps teams operate and pushing them to find new ways to connect disparate data sources in order to automate processes and improve incident response times.

You won’t want to miss this episode of the Endace Packet Forensic files as I talk with Ajit Thyagarajan, Principal Security Architect for Cisco, who talks about the challenges security analysts are facing and shares his views and ideas on how to improve their day-to-day operation.

Ajit shares the concept of the Intelligent Telemetry Plane that he and his team at Cisco have been developing. He highlights the value of the provenance of telemetry data and how important bringing different data sources together is to staying ahead of threat actors.

Finally, Ajit shares some ideas about the types of challenges a common telemetry management platform can help solve and what to keep your eyes on over the year ahead when it comes to security threats and cyber defense.

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

Endace Packet Forensics Files: Episode #23

Original Entry by : Michael Morris

Michael talks to Steve Tsirtsonis, Director EMEA Federal Business for Endace

By Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Nation-state cybersecurity is fast becoming the new battle frontline in international conflict. It is complicated by rogue threat actor groups inserting their cyber weapons into the mix, extorting money for funding, fanning the flames of nation-state disputes, and crippling potential targets.

You won’t want to miss this episode of the Endace Packet Forensic files as I talk with Steve Tsirtsonis, Director EMEA Federal Business for Endace, who shares his view of the threat landscape that government agencies around the world are facing and how it is evolving.

Steve talks about what he sees governments doing to combat escalating cyber threats, what are some of the unique challenges they face and how they are evolving their security using SOAR, AI and NDR tools to be as prepared as possible to defend critical infrastructure.

Finally, Steve gives his thoughts on the key things security teams should look out for in the years ahead and what we can all learn from government security practices.

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

Endace Packet Forensics Files: Episode #22

Original Entry by : Michael Morris

Michael talks to Michael Wallmannsberger, Security Consultant and former CISO of Air New Zealand

By Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, EndaceHas the fluidity of your network perimeter created holes in your cybersecurity defenses?

Tune in for this episode of the Endace Packet Forensic files as I get insights from expert cybersecurity consultant, and former CISO of Air New Zealand, Michael Wallmannsberger.

Michael shares some of the systemic and foundational mistakes that he sees organizations are continuing to make that hamper their security posture.  He gives some great advice for new CISOs as to what to prioritize and to focus on as they build their security maturity.

Finally, Michael shares, from a CISO’S perspective, some key elements to start with to help you walk before you run in your push for stronger cybersecurity. And highlights the importance of taking the time to develop your organization’s security competencies across the whole business.

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

Changing the Game for Network Security Investigations

Original Entry by : Michael Morris

By Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, Endace

Michael Morris, Director of Global Business Development, EndaceSecurity teams are overloaded – they have too many alerts, and tools that aren’t integrated. There’s simply not enough of the right information in the hands of security analysts to enable them to investigate issues quickly and confidently.

Organizations need integrated security tools that raise their odds of detecting threats and give them the confidence that they really know what is happening – or has happened – anywhere on their networks.

Today that battle is changing. The game is being tilted in the favor of SecOps teams as analysts can now leverage the power of two powerful and tightly integrated security platforms – Corelight NDR and the EndaceProbe Analytics Platform – to detect and hunt for threats in their networks.

Corelight’s enterprise-ready Zeek and Suricata engines allow SecOps teams to fully analyze network traffic data for threats, protocol insights and application anomalies. Corelight Sensors harness the simplicity of Zeek with enterprise-level performance, scale and administrative capability to give SOCs gain rapid visibility into what’s happening on their network.

Corelight’s out of the box integration of Zeek and Suricata provides a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-deploy security platform that delivers simple and scalable network detection and the detailed insights critical to any security team.

The EndaceProbe “always-on” network recording and packet capture platform gives customers 100% visibility into every packet anywhere on the network, enabling powerful real-time and back-in-time forensic investigation and event reconstruction.

The EndaceProbe platform scales to record traffic at full line-rate across your whole environment. Delivering high-speed centralized search and easy drill-down workflows from your SIEMS or other security tools directly to the recorded network traffic relevant to a specific alert or investigation. Additionally, Endace’s open platform architecture lets you host solutions such as Corelight Sensors as virtualized instances directly on the EndaceProbe appliance to analyze the traffic in real-time as it is recorded. This hosting capability allows you to consolidate key security tools onto a common hardware platform, reducing costs and enabling agile deployment of tools to wherever you need them across your network without additional hardware rollout and configuration.

The power of combining EndaceProbes with Corelight sensors helps customers to solve difficult security challenges like supply-chain attacks or advanced persistent threats, that are often difficult to detect and enable attackers to hide for long periods in the network by camouflaging their activity using sophisticated stealth techniques such as modifying or deleting logs or other evidence.

Having powerful detection and traffic analysis integrated with a tamper-resistant record of network activity in the form of recorded packet history streamlines forensic investigations and threat hunting efforts, making security teams more efficient and effective. Real-world problems such as identifying command and control traffic, spoofed DNS, or lateral movement inside your network can be solved in minutes.

Large technology firms, banks, and government agencies around the globe are enthusiastically embracing the power of Corelight and Endace to help them better secure their environments. To learn more about how together Endace and Corelight can help you better secure your environment check out the short demo video below and Corelight’s partner page on endace.com.