Digital Risk Investigation
Digital Risk Investigation is a specialized process within cybersecurity that focuses on proactively identifying, analyzing, and evaluating potential threats and vulnerabilities that originate from or are associated with an organization's digital presence and activities. It goes beyond traditional cybersecurity measures by considering a broader range of risks that can impact an organization's security, reputation, and overall business operations.
Here's a breakdown of the key elements of Digital Risk Investigation:
Scope: Digital risk investigation encompasses a wide range of factors, including:
External Attack Surface: Investigating vulnerabilities in externally facing assets like websites, applications, and cloud services.
Data Exposure: Identifying unintentional exposure of sensitive data in various digital channels.
Brand Security: Analyzing online activities that could harm the organization's brand or reputation.
Social Media Risks: Assessing threats from social media platforms, such as impersonation or misinformation.
Compliance Risks: Investigating digital activities for potential violations of regulations and standards.
Third-Party Risks: Evaluating the digital security practices of vendors and partners.
Proactive Approach: Digital risk investigation emphasizes a proactive approach to identifying and mitigating risks before they can be exploited or cause damage.
Analysis and Evaluation: It involves an in-depth analysis of data from various sources to understand the likelihood and potential impact of digital risks.
Use of Technology: Digital risk investigation often uses specialized tools and technologies to automate data collection, analysis, and reporting.
Business Context: It considers the broader business context to assess the potential impact of digital risks on the organization's objectives and stakeholders.
Reporting and Communication: Communication of findings and recommendations to relevant stakeholders is crucial to the investigation process.
Digital Risk Investigation aims to provide organizations with a comprehensive understanding of their digital risk landscape, enabling them to make informed decisions and proactively protect their digital assets and overall business interests.
Here’s how ThreatNG can aid in Digital Risk Investigation:
ThreatNG's external discovery capabilities lay the foundation for Digital Risk Investigation by identifying the scope of an organization's digital presence.
ThreatNG is "able to perform purely external unauthenticated discovery using no connectors," which means it can map out an organization's digital footprint as an external party would see it. This is essential for understanding the full range of potential digital risks.
Example: ThreatNG can discover all an organization's subdomains, cloud assets, and connected services, even those that might be unknown or unmanaged. This comprehensive discovery helps identify potential risk areas, such as shadow IT assets or forgotten systems.
Complementary Solutions:
Attack Surface Management (ASM) Tools: While ThreatNG provides strong external discovery, other ASM tools might offer specialized discovery capabilities for certain types of assets. Using these can give a more complete view of digital risk investigations.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM): CSPM tools can complement ThreatNG by providing deeper visibility into cloud configurations, potential misconfigurations, and critical digital risk areas.
ThreatNG's external assessment capabilities provide crucial insights into potential digital risks.
ThreatNG offers various assessment ratings that directly address different facets of digital risk:
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: Assesses the risk of web application compromise.
Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility: Evaluates the susceptibility of subdomains to takeover.
BEC & Phishing Susceptibility: Determines the likelihood of Business Email Compromise and phishing attacks.
Brand Damage Susceptibility: Assesses factors that could damage the organization's brand.
Data Leak Susceptibility: Identifies potential for sensitive data exposure.
Cyber Risk Exposure: Evaluates overall cyber risk.
Code Secret Exposure: Discovers exposed code repositories and secrets.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: Assesses risks associated with cloud and SaaS usage.
ESG Exposure: Rates the organization based on ESG violations.
Supply Chain & Third Party Exposure: Evaluates risks from the supply chain and third parties.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: Determines the susceptibility to breaches and ransomware attacks.
Mobile App Exposure: Assesses risks related to mobile applications.
Examples:
The "Brand Damage Susceptibility" assessment is directly relevant to digital risk investigation, as it considers factors like ESG violations, sentiment, and news that can impact an organization's reputation.
The "Code Secret Exposure" assessment is crucial for identifying risks related to exposed credentials and sensitive information in code repositories, a significant area of digital risk.
Complementary Solutions:
Digital Footprint Management Tools: These tools can complement ThreatNG by providing more detailed analysis of an organization's overall digital footprint, including social media presence and online mentions, which are relevant to brand and reputation risks.
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): TIPs can enrich ThreatNG's assessment data with additional context about threat actors and campaigns, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the digital risk landscape.
3. Reporting
ThreatNG's reporting capabilities are essential for communicating digital risk findings to relevant stakeholders.
It offers various reporting formats, including executive, technical, and prioritized reports.
Example: Prioritized reports help security teams and management focus on the most critical digital risks that require immediate attention.
Complementary Solutions:
GRC Platforms: ThreatNG's reports can be integrated into Governance, Risk, and Compliance platforms to provide a consolidated view of digital risks and their impact on compliance and business objectives.
Business Intelligence (BI) Tools: BI tools can use ThreatNG's data to create customized dashboards and visualizations that help stakeholders understand digital risk trends and patterns.
ThreatNG's continuous monitoring capabilities are vital for staying ahead of evolving digital risks.
It continuously monitors the external attack surface, digital risk, and security ratings, ensuring that organizations are promptly alerted to new and emerging risks.
Example: ThreatNG's continuous monitoring can detect changes in an organization's digital footprint, such as the emergence of new subdomains or cloud services, which could introduce new digital risks.
Complementary Solutions:
Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Platforms: ThreatNG's monitoring can trigger automated workflows in SOAR platforms to respond to digital risk events, such as automatically investigating a potential data leak.
Anomaly Detection Systems: These systems can complement ThreatNG by identifying unusual patterns in network traffic or user behavior that might indicate a digital risk, such as account compromise.
ThreatNG provides investigation modules that enable in-depth analysis of specific digital risk areas.
These modules offer detailed information and analysis capabilities:
Domain Intelligence: Provides insights into domains, subdomains, and related information.
IP Intelligence: Analyzes IP addresses.
Certificate Intelligence: Examines TLS certificates.
Social Media: Monitors social media for brand and reputation risks.
Sensitive Code Exposure: Discovers exposed code repositories and secrets.
Mobile Application Discovery: Investigates mobile app risks.
Search Engine Exploitation: Analyzes risks related to search engine exposure.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: Provides visibility into cloud and SaaS risks.
Online Sharing Exposure: Monitors online sharing platforms for data leaks.
Sentiment and Financials: Analyzes sentiment and financial data for risks.
Archived Web Pages: Examines archived web pages for sensitive information.
Dark Web Presence: Monitors the dark web for mentions of the organization.
Technology Stack: Identifies technologies used by the organization.
Examples:
The "Social Media" module is directly relevant to digital risk investigation, as it helps analyze potential brand reputation risks, misinformation, and social engineering threats.
The "Sentiment and Financials" module provides valuable insights into how external factors like lawsuits, negative news, and SEC filings can contribute to digital risk.
Complementary Solutions:
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Tools: OSINT tools can complement ThreatNG's investigation modules by providing additional data and context from publicly available sources, which can be valuable for investigating digital risks.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Tools: DLP tools can work with ThreatNG to identify and prevent sensitive data leaks, a key area of digital risk investigation.
ThreatNG's intelligence repositories provide valuable context and threat intelligence for digital risk investigations.
These repositories ("DarCache") include information on:
Dark Web
Compromised Credentials
Ransomware Groups
Vulnerabilities
ESG Violations
Mobile Apps
Example: The "DarCache Dark Web" repository can provide valuable intelligence on potential data breaches or brand mentions in underground forums, which are critical for digital risk investigations.
Complementary Solutions:
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIPs): Integrating with TIPs can provide a broader, more diverse set of threat intelligence to enrich ThreatNG's investigations.
Fraud Intelligence Platforms: These platforms can complement ThreatNG by providing intelligence on online fraud and scams, which can be relevant to digital risk investigations.
ThreatNG offers a robust platform for Digital Risk Investigation, with capabilities that span discovery, assessment, reporting, continuous monitoring, investigation, and threat intelligence. Its potential to work with complementary solutions can significantly enhance an organization's ability to proactively identify, analyze, and mitigate digital risks.
