Cutting through the Noise of Alerts in a Fragmented Landscape
Cybersecurity service providers face the continuous challenge of balancing alert notifications with the quality of client service. This article explores how Cyngular's innovative approach of transforming alerts into insights has led to a triple-win scenario, benefiting service providers, their analysts, and clients.
Cyngular has emerged as a transformative force in an industry plagued by inefficiencies and fatigue. Traditionally, external service providers shouldered the burden of receiving countless alerts on behalf of companies—a service vital yet cumbersome. The analysts, acting as vigilant watchdogs, found themselves in a reactive posture, inundated with alerts, many of which were false alarms or non-critical. This relentless stream often led to hasty, middle-of-the-night phone calls to clients, delivering problems rather than solutions.
A major capability of Cyngular’s proprietary ClouDFIR platform is to automatically execute the requisite investigation on every alert and relate that alert to others which share a common denominator. This provides Security Operations Center (SOC) analysts the insights instead of just the alerts. Furthermore, it allows the analyst to better perform and intelligently cover 100x more alerts than manual processes, all in a cloud environment, often one much more complicated than has been handled before.
Connecting the Dots in a Sea of Data
The cybersecurity landscape is often compared to a battleground, where every alert might signal a potential threat or be a false alarm. The complexities faced by SOC analysts in distinguishing benign anomalies from genuine threats are intricate, especially when these alerts are scattered over days, weeks, or even months, and occur across shifts featuring multiple analysts.
Alerts are the lifeblood of cybersecurity—the indicators of potential breaches or issues within the system. However, not all alerts signify a crisis; many are innocuous, such as an action taken by a DevOps engineer that appears malicious. Only the ability to automatically track that user over time will indicate if the action was benign or malicious, all subject to additional activities this same strong user has taken over the course of days, weeks, or months. Such alerts are stored in databases, typically amassing over time, potentially burying significant threats under a pile of trivialities.
The Fragmented System
The current system's failure lies in its inability to provide full investigations and ascertain the interconnectedness of malicious activities over time, actions that would otherwise only partially pop up as alerts.
For instance, a failed login attempt today might seem insignificant, but paired with an unauthorized access attempt to a different resource next month, it could indicate a pattern. These discrete events, when not connected, fail to paint the full picture of an actor's malicious intent. The challenge intensifies over time, as the average "dwell time"—the period a threat actor remains undetected within a system—can span months, as seen in high-profile cases like Uber and MGM.
The Overwhelming Volume of Alerts
SOC analysts are inundated with alerts – thousands daily, making manual investigation impractical. Optimistically, it might take half an hour to investigate each alert, far exceeding the hours in a day. This deluge of information makes it nearly impossible to connect a current alert with one from a week or more ago, especially when analysts work in shifts, further fragmenting the continuity of threat assessment.
Because SOC analysts work around the clock, multiple analysts may review the same set of alerts without a cohesive strategy. This rotation exacerbates the challenge of correlating alerts over time. A team of even five to ten people will find it difficult to remember and connect the nuances of thousands of alerts across their respective shifts.
The Critical Need for Connection
There is a critical need for systems that can synthesize data across time and shifts, identify patterns, and connect disparate events to reveal the stealthy approach of threat actors. These actors often employ a "low and slow" tactic—staying under the radar, performing reconnaissance, and exploiting vulnerabilities without triggering immediate detection. The gaps between their actions can span months, and without a way to connect these actions, the alerts they generate remain just fragments of information, isolated and ineffective in mapping the broader threat landscape.
The reality faced by SOC analysts is one of complexity and overwhelming odds. Without the ability to connect and correlate alerts over time, the war against cyber threats is one of attrition, where the defenders are always several steps behind. This article serves as a rallying cry for a paradigm shift in how we approach cybersecurity—from a reactive stance to a proactive, intelligent, and interconnected defense system.
Empowering the Analysts
For the analysts, Cyngular's ClouDFIR is a breath of fresh air. The relentless pressure to immediately determine the relevance of every alert often leads to fatigue, impacting their efficiency and judgment. Cyngular's intelligent alert system streamlines their workflow, allowing them to focus on what truly matters. This not only spares them from burnout but also fosters a more analytical and less reactive work environment.
Streamlining the Service Provider's Workflow
Service providers find a powerful ally in Cyngular. The enhanced efficiency translates into a superior service offering. The ability to provide qualitative insights over quantitative data sets represents a seismic shift in their value proposition to their clients. Cyngular's system acts as a force multiplier, enabling providers to offer a more nuanced, insightful service.
Elevating the Client Experience
Clients experience a notable transformation in service quality. Gone are the days of disruptive calls at untimely hours. Cyngular ensures that only alerts of genuine urgency reach the client's attention. When Cyngular alerts its users, that alert already comes with a full investigation’s worth of insights – not just a report, but an actionable one, with directives as to the best course of action. This not only allows clients to rest uninterrupted but also provides them with the peace of mind that their cybersecurity is not just monitored, but intelligently managed.
The Triple-win Situation
All this adds up to a triple-win situation, where the service provider, the analysts, and the client all experience significant benefits from Cyngular's service.
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For the Service Provider: They can offer a differentiated service that emphasizes quality over quantity, providing a competitive edge in the market while saving them manpower, time, and delivering a better SLA to their clients.
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For the Analysts: The system's intelligence spares them the fatigue of sifting through every alert, enabling them to concentrate on the alerts that truly required their expertise.
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For the Client: The service they receive is refined, not just in terms of fewer disruptions but also in the quality of the insights provided, allowing for a more strategic approach to cybersecurity.
Conclusion
Ultimately, Cyngular's innovative approach demonstrates that with the right technology and methodology, cybersecurity can be transformed from a relentless stream of alerts into strategic insights. By empowering analysts, streamlining service providers' operations, and enhancing the client experience, Cyngular has established a new benchmark for excellence in the cybersecurity industry. The case of Cyngular is a testament to how technology, when applied thoughtfully and over time, can create a synergy that benefits all stakeholders involved.
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