Hello, aspiring ethical hackers. In our previous blogpost, you learnt about Antivirus. In this article you will learn about Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). Let’s begin with what is it.

What is Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)?

Endpoint Detection and Response, also known as Endpoint detection and Threat response (EDT) is a tool used in endpoint security that can detect, contain, investigate and remediate malware, ransomware and other threats like cyber attacks on endpoint devices. This endpoint devices maybe desktop, laptop, mobile, servers and virtual machines.

Both are endpoint security solutions that protect the endpoint devices from malware and viruses. Although its functionality is similar to Antivirus, it is different from Antivirus. While Antivirus detects known malware & viruses, EDR can also detect advanced cyber threats and even actions that seem suspicious. It has a centralized management with agents installed on client devices with a centralized management on one device.

An EDR has two components. They are,

1. Endpoint data collection agent.
2. Endpoint centralized management console.

The endpoint agents are installed on the endpoint devices whose security needs to be monitored. This can include multiple devices. These agents collect data from the endpoint devices and send it to the centralized management console.

Importance of EDR

Constantly evolving threat landscape makes the role of EDR very important in cybersecurity. EDR’s not only mitigate known threats, but they also neutralize unknown threats based on their behaviors or action. Not just that, they mitigate the threat by responding with a counter action. EDR’s also play a role in automatic incident response and even in digital forensics and compliance testing.

How EDR works?

An EDR has the following stages while functioning. They are,

1. Collecting data:

This is the first stage and in this stage all the agents installed on endpoint devices collect data and send it to the management console. Analysts monitor the security of the devices from a single location.

2. Analyzing collected data:

All the data collected by endpoint agents may not be important from security point of view. So, the centralized Management console of an EDR filters the data and analyses it for any threats.

3. Detecting threats:

While analyzing the collected data, if EDR finds anything dangerous, it flags it as a threat and triggers an alert.

4. Planning response:

Not just sending an alert, it also responds to mitigate the threat on the machine it is detected.

Hello, aspiring ethical hackers. In our previous blogpost, you learnt about threat intelligence. In this article, you will learn everything you need to know about Security Information & Event Management or SIEM solutions and its role in threat intelligence.

What is SIEM?

You have learnt in threat intelligence that data & information related to security is collected, processed and analyzed to detect upcoming threats to the organization. This data not only includes external data but also data from the organization’s network itself.

A Security Information & Event Management solution’s role comes here. It collects information, stores, processes, analyzes and upgrades security related data from multiple devices from the organization. This also helps in proper incident response. SIEM can collect, aggregate, analyze data from multiple devices in a network like Firewalls, IDS, IPS, Network gateways, Honeypots, Wireless access points, Endpoint security solutions, Routers, Switches etc. If it finds anything suspicious, it can trigger an alert and even quarantine the resource.

SIEM is a combination of Security Information management (SIM) and Security Event Management (SEM) solutions. It can be considered a successor to log viewers and event management tools.

Importance of SIEM

You have just now learnt that Log analysis tools and Event viewer tools are the predecessors of SIEM solutions. Well, manually viewing and analyzing logs and events can be a process requiring efforts of huge proportions. Just imagine that with multiple devices in a network, instead of a single system. This can directly affect the security of the organization as most of the threats nowadays require immediate response.

Here’s where a SIEM solution proves resourceful. It not only simplifies and automates but also enhances the security of the organization. Some popular SIEM vendors include Splunk, IBM QRadar, LogRhythm, Microsoft Sentinel, Securonix, Exabeam, Sumologic etc.

Hello, aspiring ethical hackers. In this article, you will learn everything you need to know about Incident Response (IR). Unfortunately, unlike pen testing or ethical hacking, the role of incident response becomes important only after a cyber attack or any other cyber incident has occurred.

What is Incident Response (IR)?

In simple terms, incident response is how you or your organization respond to a cyber attack or a data breach that occurred in your organization. Obviously, any organization will want to respond to any cyber incident in such a way that the impact or damage due to that incident is minimized and contained.

So, IR is a planned and organized response of an organization to a cyber attack or incident.

Why is incident response important?

No matter how much security an organization has, there is no guarantee that a cyber incident may not occur. This cyber attack can damage the organization’s brand reputation, affect customers retention, damage intellectual property etc. A data breach can simply make a business run out of business.

IR aims to reduce this damage as quickly as possible. This requires a definite plan instead of ad hoc responses.

Stages of Incident Response

As I told you, Incident response should follow a planned and organized approach that should make the organization quickly recover from the impact of the cyber attack. Any good Incident response should have 5 steps. They are,

1.Preparation or Planning

Every organization should have a definite Incident response plan that caters to its requirements and depends on resources it wants to protect in its organization. This plan should be in written format. It should also have a dedicated incident response team that is not only aware of the incident response plan but also trained in it. This team should have the necessary tools and documentation ready in the case of a cyber attack.

2.Identification:

The next step is identifying the incident. In this era of false positives and false negatives, the incident response teams should be able to first determine what is a cyber attack to its organization. For example, let’s imagine an organization uses Windows XP machines in its organization. You know Windows XP machines are vulnerable to ms08-067.

Multiple SYN requests to SMB port of Windows XP machines of an organization may raise shackles but it is not yet an incident. But somebody exploiting the vulnerability to gain a shell or creating a new user account on that Windows XP machine can be termed as an incident.

3.Containment:

Once an incident has been identified correctly, the next step should be to limit and prevent further damage. The infected resource should be isolated and steps taken to ensure that customers or employees don’t experience any problems in accessing the resource.

Going with the same example we gave above, the infected Windows XP machine should be isolated so that the infection can be prevented from spreading to other devices on the network. In some cases, the network traffic needs to be rerouted or redirected. Once isolated, the forensics team should be informed so that it can perform digital forensics to further investigate the incident.

4.Eradication:

After the infected system or resource is isolated and the forensics team is done with creating forensic images of the infected system, the next step is the removal and restoration of systems affected by the security incident. For example, this stage involves fixing the ms08-067 vulnerability and removing the malware or payload, backdoors from the infected system. The important role of this stage is to make sure that the system cannot be exploited again.

5. Recovery

This stage involves bringing the infected system back into production environment and to make sure that another incident doesn’t occur. Before the infected system is brought back into production again, they are tested, monitored, validated and cleansed of all malware.

All of the above steps should be written in policy plan and should be documented. That’s all about Incident response. Next, learn how to prevent your organization from being hacked with threat intelligence.