The Importance of Deception Technology
Companies face a wide range of cyber threats, and cyber threat actors are growing more subtle and sophisticated than before. In some cases, an organization may not be able to detect and prevent an attacker from reaching its systems.
Deception technology provides an organization with an additional opportunity to detect and respond to a cyberattack before the attacker reaches the organization’s real systems. Any interaction with these fake assets is anomalous and potentially malicious by definition, lowering the risk of false positive detections. By distracting the attacker with these fake systems, the company has the opportunity to terminate the intrusion before it does damage.
How Threat Deception Technology Works
Threat deception technology is typically built using honeypots, which are computers designed to look like real and enticing corporate systems. Often, these systems will be deliberately vulnerable to attack, making them a likely first target for an attacker.
To be effective, a honeypot needs to be realistic and indistinguishable from a real system. To achieve this, many deception technologies will use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to ensure that systems are dynamic and reduce their probability of detection.
Once an attacker engages with the honeypot, they are in an environment that the security team observes and controls. This enables the security team to observe the tools and techniques used by the attacker and ensure that these can be detected and blocked by the organization’s existing security architecture.
Why Use Deception Technology?
Deception technology is another tool for organizations looking to protect themselves against cyber threats. Some of the benefits that it can provide include the following:
- Post-Breach Detection: Deception technology enables an organization to detect potential threats after their environment is breached but before damage is done. This offers an organization an additional opportunity to identify and respond to the threat before it poses a real threat to corporate systems.
- Decreased Cyber Risk: Deceptive environments are designed to attract and snare a potential intruder. By delaying or diverting them entirely, they reduce the risk of an attack against real corporate IT assets.
- Reduced False Positives: Some threat detection technologies generate large volumes of false positives, which can mask true threats. Deception technology has low false positive rates because any interaction with the fake systems is a threat that should be investigated.
- Threat Intelligence: Deceptive environments are often highly instrumented, collecting information about the attacker’s activities, tools, and techniques. This information can be used to evaluate and improve an organization’s defenses against cyberattacks.
- Easy Scalability: Deceptive environments are commonly implemented using virtual machines. This enables the systems to be restored quickly after an attack and allows the creation of large deceptive environments.
What Cybersecurity Attacks Can Be Detected by Threat Deception Technology?
Threat Deception technology is designed to lure an attacker into a deceptive environment where they can be observed by the corporate security team. The nature of these deceptive environments enables them to detect a range of potential cyberattacks, including:
- Vulnerability Exploits: Honeypots can be deliberately configured to contain certain vulnerabilities, enabling the organization to detect attackers scanning for and exploiting these vulnerabilities.
- Account Takeover: Cyber attackers use credential stuffing and similar means to gain access to user accounts. Deceptive environments can include user accounts with weak passwords that attackers can access and perform other attacks that the organization can monitor.
- Privilege Escalation: Once an attacker has access to a user account, they may attempt to escalate its privileges. Deceptive environments can be configured to allow and monitor common forms of privilege escalation.
- Phishing Attacks: Phishing and spear phishing attacks are a common means for attackers to gain access to an organization’s environment. Deceptive email accounts can be configured to automatically open email attachments and click on links to direct attackers to honeypot systems.
Deception Technology with Infinity and Zero Trust
Deception technology can provide an organization with early detection of attacks and insight into attacker’s tools and techniques. To do so, an organization needs honeypots and deceptive services, deep insight into them, and the ability to make use of the information that they provide.
Check Point solutions provide the infrastructure that organizations need to safely use deception technology and leverage its benefits. Check Point’s zero trust security enable deceptive technology to be deployed while minimizing the risk to the organization. Check Point Infinity Extended Prevention and Response (XDR/XPR) provides the ability to rapidly use threat intelligence generated by deception technology to protect the rest of the organization’s systems.
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