A Breach Is Inevitable: Why Organizations Are Failing in Proactive Threat Detection
In today's cyber security reality, security teams are drowning in acronyms. CTEM, CSPM, IDM and more: all are parts of a common defense lineup aiming to create robust protection around digital infrastructure. Organizations are spending billions of dollars on a wide range of security tools, many of which promise bulletproof protection- yet breaches still occur.
Threat actors are accelerating their tactics at an alarming pace. The duration from initial access to data encryption, which once spanned weeks, has now been reduced to mere hours. This rapid evolution necessitates equally swift detection and response capabilities to effectively counteract these threats. In this blog post, we will argue that fancy tools are not enough: Organizations must adapt by implementing robust real-time monitoring and quick incident response strategies to stay ahead in this high-stakes race.
Lessons from the Field:
The case studies that follow illustrate situations faced by clients without a yearly subscription who selected Profero to handle individual incidents.
Case Study 1: Ransomware Attack
Our incident response team managed a ransomware attack on a large company that operates with over 30 distinct domains in its network. This attack forced the company to suspend its operations entirely. Upon investigation, we discovered that before the ransomware encrypted the computers, multiple detections were triggered by the EDR system. These alerts, which were of high and critical severity, pointed to credential theft activities and lateral movement across several hosts. Unfortunately, because these alerts were not addressed in a timely manner, the threat actor managed to stay within the network and executed the encryption three days later.
Case Study 2: Data Breach
In 2024, our incident response team managed a data breach at a large company, where a threat actor attempted to sell a substantial amount of stolen sensitive data. During the investigation, it was revealed that prior to the breach, the security system flagged multiple alerts. These alerts highlighted issues such as persistence mechanisms established on hosts, credential dumping, and lateral movement. Regrettably, these alerts were not promptly addressed, allowing the threat actor to remain undetected in the network long enough to exfiltrate the data.
Case Study 3: Business Email Compromise (BEC) Scam
In 2024, our incident response team encountered a Business Email Compromise (BEC) scam involving a compromised CFO account at a major corporation. The threat actor exploited an evil proxy phishing tool to capture the session cookie of the CFO's account, gaining unauthorized access. With this access, the attacker created several unauthorized roles within the user mailbox to facilitate fraudulent activities.
While Microsoft 365 Defender detected critical signs of the compromise, including atypical travel and threat intelligence session alerts linked to the CFO account, they were overlooked by the security team,allowing the BEC scam to proceed. The lack of implemented Azure AD Conditional Access policies and the limited retention of audit logs further hampered incident response.
The Costly Gap Between Investment and Effectiveness
Recent incidents underscore a significant and costly disconnect between the substantial investments companies make in security and the effectiveness of their application. The failure to swiftly address high-severity alerts allows threat actors to remain undetected within networks for too long, leading to severe operational disruptions and data theft. This highlights the critical need for companies to not only invest in advanced security technologies but also ensure their strategic and timely deployment.
The Illusion of Bulletproof Security Solutions
While vendors often assure organizations and executives of invulnerable security products, the truth is that these tools require persistent vigilance to remain effective. Maintenance, monitoring, and regular updates are essential to harness their full potential. Therefore, it's crucial for organizations to invest not just in acquiring these technologies, but also in developing teams and processes to optimize their capabilities.
The Weak Spots: Lack of Real-Time Monitoring
One of the most significant gaps in proactive threat detection is the absence of real-time monitoring for high and critical severity alerts. While many organizations utilize SIEM and other systems to centralize log collection and detection, they often fail to prioritize handling crucial alerts. Even more concerning is thatsome alerts remain unnoticed within the system, never reaching external channels like Slack or email. This oversight creates significant opportunities for attackers to embed themselves,completely undetected.
Developing predefined Real-Time Monitoring processes involves several key steps to ensure that the organization is prepared to handle potential threats. Here's a streamlined approach:
1. Gain Familiarity with High-Probability Attack Alerts:
Ensure security personnel are well-versed in identifying and responding to alert categories that are commonly associated with high-probability attacks.
2.Implement Real-Time Alerting Procedures:
Establish real-time alerting mechanisms to ensure that high and critical severity alerts are promptly flagged and communicated to the relevant security teams and consider integrating tools like PagerDuty, Splunk On-Call and OpsGenie. These platforms can help automate the escalation process, ensuring that alerts reach the appropriate personnel swiftly, thereby minimizing response times and improving incident resolution effectiveness.
3. Integrate SOC KPIs and OKRs:
To measure and improve the effectiveness of your Security Operations Center (SOC), it's crucial to define and track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). SOC KPIs might include metrics such as average response time, number of incidents handled, and accuracy of threat identification. Establishing clear OKRs can help align the SOC's goals with the organization's broader objectives, promoting accountability and continuous improvement.
4. Implement an Alert Investigation Methodology:
Developing a structured alert investigation methodology is key to efficiently managing alerts. This process should outline the steps for triaging alerts, identifying false positives, and escalating real threats. Utilize a tiered approach to alert handling, where initial investigations are conducted by frontline analysts and complex alerts are escalated to senior analysts (this ensures that every alert is addressed in a timely and effective manner, reducing the potential for overlooking threats and improving overall security posture).
5. Prioritize High-Severity Alerts:
To effectively manage cyber security threats, it's essential to establish a strict SLA (Service Level Agreement) Response Time for high and critical severity alerts, prioritizing them based on potential impact. This involves dedicating resources to promptly address the sealerts as they occur, ensuring minimal disruption and risk to your organization.
Why Predefined Processes Matter:
Establishing predefined incident response processes for high-probability attacks- such as ransomware, data breach, and insider threats—ensures that security team can respond swiftly and effectively.
Developing predefined incident response processes involves several key steps to ensure that your organization is prepared to handle potential threats effectively, such as:
1. Identify High-Risk Scenarios:
Analyze past incidents and threat intelligence to identify categories of attacks that pose the greatest risk to your organization, such as ransomware, phishing, or data breaches.
2. Define Response Actions:
For each high-risk scenario, outline specific response actions. This includes detection methods, containment strategies, eradication steps, and recovery processes.
3. Assign Roles and Responsibilities:
Clearly assign roles and responsibilities to team members for each step of the process to ensure accountability and swift action during an incident.
4. Create Detailed Playbooks:
Develop incident response playbooks that provide step-by-step instructions for each scenario. These playbooks should be clear, concise, and easy to follow.
5. Incorporate Communication Protocols:
Establish internal and external communication protocols to ensure appropriate information sharing during and after an incident.
In conclusion
The inevitability of security breaches- despite substantial investments in advanced cybersecurity tools- underscores the urgent need for organizations to enhance their proactive threat detection and incident response capabilities. Developing comprehensive, predefined processes, assigning clear roles, and conducting regular drills can significantly improve an organization's ability to respond to threats as they occur, minimizing potential damages and enhancing overall security resilience.
At Profero, we tackle the challenges outlined in this blog with our breach readiness strategy, which closes gaps, reduces risk levels, and strengthens the entire security stack's posture.
Profero empowers businesses to implement strategies that minimize exposure to identified threats and gaps. These strategies are integrated into our Rapid-IR platform, currently in closed Beta. Here is how you can participate.
