What is Threat Detection and Response (TDR)?

Prevention is naturally the first pillar of cybersecurity – you can prevent over 98% of threats targeting your organization. But what about the threats that were not blocked?

You first have to detect them, leveraging cutting edge analytical techniques such as behavioral analysis and other AI-based detection technologies to uncover even the stealthiest attacks. Operators can then investigate and learn more on each threat and also hunt for additional threats. The next step is to respond: remediate and eliminate the threat as well as ensure it will be prevented the next time.

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Essential Components of a TDR Solution

For threats that an organization is not able to prevent, the ability to rapidly detect and respond to them is critical to minimizing the damage and cost to the organization. Effective threat detection requires cybersecurity solutions with the following capabilities:

Full Attack Vector Visibility: Organizations’ IT infrastructure has become diverse, including on-premises computers, mobile devices, cloud infrastructure, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices that can be attacked via a variety of infection vectors. Effective threat detection requires full visibility into all attack vectors, including the network, email, cloud-based applications, mobile apps, and more.
Full-Spectrum Malware Detection: Detecting malware is becoming increasingly difficult as malware becomes more sophisticated and evasive. Modern malware attack campaigns employ polymorphism to evade signature-based detection systems and use unique malware samples for each target organization. Effective TDR solutions require the ability to identify malware attacks using artificial intelligence and sandbox-based content analysis techniques that are not fooled by these evasion tactics.
High Detection Accuracy: Security operations centers (SOCs) commonly receive many more alerts than they can process, which results in time being wasted investigating false positives while true threats are overlooked. Threat detection tools must generate high-quality alerts with low false-positive rates to ensure that security teams are able to focus on real threats to the enterprise.
Cutting Edge Data Analytics: Enterprise networks are growing more and more complex and include a wide variety of different endpoints. This means that security teams have access to more security data than they can effectively process or use. Cutting-edge data analytics are a critical component of distilling this mass of data into usable insights for differentiating true threats from false positives.
Threat Intelligence Integration: Threat intelligence feeds can be an invaluable source of information regarding current cyber campaigns and other aspects of cybersecurity risk. A TDR solution should allow threat intelligence feeds to be directly integrated into it and used as a source of data when identifying and classifying potential threats.

After a potential threat has been identified, security analysts need tools that support incident investigation and remediation. Certain functionality is essential to maximizing the effectiveness of these tools, including:

MITRE ATT&CK Analysis: The MITRE ATT&CK framework provides a wealth of information about the methods by which an attacker can carry out various stages in a cyberattack. Threat detection and response Solutions should provide mappings to MITRE ATT&CK techniques so that security teams can leverage the associated detection and mitigation recommendations provided by the framework.
Automated Threat Remediation: Cybercriminals are using automation to increase the speed and scale of their attacks, making manual response too slow to minimize the impact of an attack. Effective TDR solutions should offer playbook-based automated response to enable quick, coordinated threat response across an organization’s entire IT infrastructure.
Investigation and Threat Hunting Support: Security teams require the ability to manually investigate a potential incident and perform threat hunting for undetected intrusions. A TDR solution should provide support for threat hunting by offering access to vital data and useful threat intelligence in a user-friendly console.

Achieving the Goals of Threat Detection and Response with Check Point

Effective threat detection and response is central to any organization’s security strategy. Deploying a leading TDR solution enables an organization to:

Reduce Attacker Dwell Time: The longer that an attacker has access to an organization’s systems, the more damage that they can cause. Rapid threat detection reduces dwell time and the complexity of incident remediation.
Decrease Costs of Incident Response: An attacker with extended access to an organization’s systems is much more difficult to dislodge and has the opportunity to cause more damage. The sooner that a threat is detected, the lower the cost of remediation.
Optimize SOC Operations: Many SOCs are overwhelmed by low-quality data, resulting in alert fatigue and missed threat detections. An effective TDR solution enables a SOC to focus its efforts on true threats rather than wasting time on false positives.
Shift to Proactive Cybersecurity: Threat hunting enables an organization to proactively search for indications of an intrusion in its IT infrastructure. This proactive approach to cybersecurity allows detection and remediation of previously unknown threats.

Check Point Infinity SOC enables organizations to detect threats with unmatched accuracy and optimize remediation with playbook-based, automated response. To see Check Point’s capabilities for yourself, you’re welcome to request a personalized live demonstration.