Every network has security issues. You know it, I know it, and hackers know it.
Year after year there continues to be a long line of security breaches. In 2020, these were just some of the entities that were hacked into and where valuable information, money, and crypto currency was stolen: Livecoin, Microsoft Exchange Server, Facebook, Colonial Pipeline, Volkswagen & Audi, JBS USA meat processing, UC San Diego Health, T Mobile, Poly Network, Liquid, Neiman Marcus, Argentinian government's National Registry of Persons, Panasonic, Robinhood and Bitmart.
The Identity Theft Research Center (ITRC) issued a report that stated there has been an increase of 17% in recorded data breaches for the year of 2021 when compared to 2020. According to the 2021 Verizon DBIR, ransomware continues to gain momentum and rose 6%, accounting for about 10% of all breaches. Mimecast reported that 80% of the companies they surveyed has been the target of a ransomware attack over the last two years and that the average ransomware cost for the USA is now over $6M. The DBIR also reported that incidences and breaches for cloud-based assets were now more prevalent than on-premises equipment.
The 2021 Ponemon Institute’s Annual Cost of a Breach Report found that the average cost of a breach rose 10% to $4.24M. This report also found that it took an average of 287 days to identify and contain a data breach.
So now that you know the facts, what are you going to do about it?
For instance, do you have visibility into your network to know if malicious packets are passing through it or not? In addition, if something bad were happening on the network, would you really know about it?
The is where the Keysight Challenge comes into play. Per the factoids up top, most enterprises ARE NOT able to see what is happening on their network. They simply don’t have the visibility to see what is, and what is not, happening.
Visibility starts with taps and packet brokers. These two devices give you access to data across the network along with the ability to organize that data into coherent pieces of data sets that can be sent to purpose-built tools to convert that data into actionable insight.
However, just deploying taps and packet brokers isn’t good enough. You need the right KIND of equipment. For instance, you need packet brokers that don’t drop data packet, thereby losing critical data, before it is even sent to the security tool. This means you need packet brokers that run at full line rate and use FPGAs to process features, instead of using a CPU that can’t handle that high of a speed and drops packets because it is overloaded. This becomes especially important as network speeds transition from 10 GB to 40 and 100 GB. There is a a whitepaper here on the importance of lossless visibility or you can watch a video if you want more information.
After you have created visibility and a security architecture that can mitigate, if not outright eliminate security threats within the network, you need a solution that can actively look for weaknesses within your security architecture. This is where breach and attack (BAS) simulations come into play. You need to periodically test your defenses to make sure they are actually detecting and blocking threats.
A given security architecture may look good on paper, but you must verify it. Otherwise, your company will probably end up being one of the breach statistics talked about in the future. BAS type activities give you the confidence you need that your network is secure. It also gives you objective data results that you can share with senior management as they ask questions about the security of the network.
We can help you find your issues before THEY (the hackers) do. Take the Keysight Challenge and we’ll prove it. Contact us to attend a demo or deploy a proof of concept to thoroughly analyze what a network visibility and a BAS solution can do for you.
See for yourself how visibility solutions can significantly enhance your company’s security architecture!