Advanced Threat Defense
Advanced Threat Defense (ATD) is a modern cybersecurity strategy that uses a multi-layered, proactive approach to protect an organization from sophisticated cyberattacks that traditional security measures might miss. Unlike conventional antivirus software or firewalls that often rely on known signatures to detect threats, ATD focuses on anticipating potential attack vectors and analyzing behavior to stay ahead of unknown threats, including zero-day exploits and advanced persistent threats (APTs).
Key Components
ATD employs several cutting-edge technologies and methodologies to create a robust defense system:
Behavioral Analysis: ATD systems monitor the behavior of applications, users, and network traffic to identify anomalies that may signal a threat. By establishing a baseline of "normal" behavior, the system can detect deviations that suggest malicious activity.
Machine Learning and AI: These technologies are used to analyze vast amounts of data, identify new attack patterns, and predict potential threats. This enables ATD solutions to adapt and evolve in response to the evolving threat landscape.
Sandboxing: This technique involves running suspicious files or applications in a controlled, isolated virtual environment to observe their behavior without risking the integrity of the network. It's especially effective for analyzing unknown malware and zero-day threats.
Threat Intelligence Sharing: ATD solutions incorporate threat intelligence from various sources, including security researchers and global databases. This shared intelligence enables the identification of new and emerging threats quickly, providing a forward-looking defense.
Automated Response: When a threat is detected, ATD systems can automatically isolate infected systems, remove malicious files, and block malicious IP addresses. This rapid, automated response helps to minimize the damage caused by an attack.
ATD is not a single product but a holistic, integrated approach that protects an organization's entire digital ecosystem, including endpoints, network traffic, email systems, and cloud services.
ThreatNG supports Advanced Threat Defense (ATD) by providing a proactive, external view of an organization's digital presence, enabling the anticipation and mitigation of potential attack vectors. It operates from the perspective of an attacker, identifying vulnerabilities and exposures that could be exploited to launch a sophisticated attack.
External Discovery and Assessment
ThreatNG's External Discovery is the first step in ATD, as it identifies and maps all publicly exposed assets of an organization, including forgotten subdomains, misconfigured cloud buckets, and exposed APIs. It does this without needing any internal access, which gives a realistic view of what an attacker would see.
The platform's assessments go into great detail, providing an ATD capability by identifying specific susceptibilities:
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This assessment directly measures an organization's defense against sophisticated attacks. It considers Domain Intelligence (exposed sensitive ports, private IPs, and known vulnerabilities), Dark Web Presence (compromised credentials and ransomware gang activity), and Sentiment and Financials findings.
Cyber Risk Exposure: This score assesses an organization's overall cyber risk by examining a broad range of parameters, including vulnerabilities, sensitive ports, and exposed cloud services. It also factors in Code Secret Exposure, which discovers code repositories and investigates their contents for sensitive data.
Positive Security Indicators: This feature is unique in that it highlights an organization’s security strengths rather than just its weaknesses. It detects the presence of beneficial security controls, such as Web Application Firewalls or multi-factor authentication, which are core components of an ATD strategy. ThreatNG validates these measures from an attacker's perspective, providing objective evidence of their effectiveness.
External Threat Alignment: This capability aligns an organization's security posture with external threats by identifying vulnerabilities in a way an attacker would. For example, ThreatNG's assessments can be directly mapped to MITRE ATT&CK techniques to determine how an adversary might gain initial access.
Reporting and Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG’s reports are essential for an ATD strategy as they help organizations prioritize and act on threats. Reports are provided in various formats, including Executive and Technical, and include risk levels to help focus on the most critical risks. Each report also provides the reasoning behind the findings and recommendations for mitigation.
The platform's continuous monitoring is a cornerstone of ATD. It provides real-time monitoring of an organization’s external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings, ensuring that new vulnerabilities and emerging threats are detected and flagged as they appear. This continuous visibility allows an organization to respond to threats proactively rather than reactively.
Investigation Modules
ThreatNG's investigation modules provide the detailed analysis needed for an ATD strategy.
Sensitive Code Exposure: This module proactively scans public code repositories to identify leaked secrets, including API keys, access tokens, and cloud credentials. For example, if a developer accidentally uploads a file with an AWS Access Key ID, ThreatNG would find it, allowing the organization to secure the key before an attacker can use it.
Search Engine Exploitation: This module helps an organization investigate its susceptibility to exposing sensitive information via search engines. Identifying these exposures, such as public passwords or privileged folders, enables an organization to address them before they are discovered and exploited by an attacker.
Dark Web Presence: This module monitors for mentions of the organization, associated ransomware events, and compromised credentials on the dark web. This provides an early warning of potential attacks and helps organizations get ahead of threats before they materialize.
Intelligence Repositories
ThreatNG's DarCache intelligence repositories provide the threat intelligence that powers an ATD approach.
DarCache Vulnerability: This repository is a core component of ATD. It provides a holistic approach to managing external risks by understanding their real-world exploitability, the likelihood of exploitation, and the potential impact. It includes information from NVD, EPSS, and KEV, providing an organization with a forward-looking approach to prioritizing vulnerabilities that are not only severe but also likely to be weaponized. It also offers direct links to verified Proof-of-Concept (PoC) Exploits on platforms like GitHub.
DarCache Ransomware: This repository tracks over 70 ransomware groups and their activities, providing organizations with intelligence on new tactics and events. This enables them to proactively strengthen their defenses against these threats.
DarCache Rupture (Compromised Credentials): This repository tracks usernames and emails that have been compromised in data breaches. By continuously monitoring this, an organization can proactively force password resets for affected employees or customers, which prevents unauthorized access and potential fraud.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's external threat intelligence can be leveraged to enhance the effectiveness of complementary solutions, thereby forming a more comprehensive ATD system. For example, if ThreatNG’s DarCache Vulnerability repository identifies a critical, actively exploited vulnerability in a public-facing web server, this information can be used to automatically create a security ticket in an IT Service Management (ITSM) platform like ServiceNow.
Additionally, suppose ThreatNG's Dark Web Presence module identifies compromised credentials. In that case, that intelligence can be fed into an Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution to trigger a forced password reset for the affected user and require multi-factor authentication (MFA) on their next login. This synergy enables an organization to utilize ThreatNG’s proactive external scanning to inform and automate a response using internal security tools, thereby creating a more comprehensive defense.
