Another kind of cybersecurity solution is deception technology, which is intended to fool hackers who are attacking the network of an organisation. In order to deflect the attacker’s focus from the organisation’s real IT assets, honeypots and other phoney systems are typically used in this situation. When an attacker engages with these fictitious assets, the organisation is alerted, enabling it to monitor the attacker’s actions and take countermeasures to avoid a real attack. Check out the cyber security online course to learn more.
The Importance of Deception Technology
Companies are vulnerable to a variety of cyber threats, and the people responsible for these attacks are becoming more cunning and experienced. An organisation could occasionally be unable to identify and stop an attacker from accessing its systems.
An organisation can identify and respond to a cyberattack before the attacker accesses the firm’s real systems by using deception technology. Because any engagement with these fictitious assets is by definition abnormal and possibly malicious, the likelihood of false positive detections is reduced. The organisation has the chance to stop the intrusion before it causes damage by diverting the attacker with these fictitious systems.
How Threat Deception Technology Works
Honeypots, which are computers made to appear like authentic and alluring business systems, are commonly used in the construction of threat deception technologies. These systems are frequently designed to be attackable, which makes them a prime candidate for an attacker’s first target.
A honeypot must be realistic and hard to tell apart from a real system in order to be effective. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will be used by various deception technologies to accomplish this goal by making systems more dynamic and decreasing the likelihood of discovery.
Once an attacker interacts with the honeypot, they enter a monitored and managed environment by the security team. This makes it possible for the security team to watch the tools and strategies the attacker is using and make sure these can be found and blocked by the organisation’s existing security architecture.
Why Use Deception Technology?
Another technique available to businesses trying to defend themselves against cyberattacks is deception technology. Among the advantages it can offer are the following:
- Post-Breach Detection: By using deception technology, an organisation can identify possible threats following a breach in their environment before any harm is done. This gives a company another chance to spot the problem and take action before it really jeopardises company systems.
- Reduced Cyber Risk: Potential intruders are drawn to and captured in deceptive environments. They lessen the possibility of an assault against actual business IT assets by postponing or rerouting them completely.
- Reduced False Positives: Large volumes of false positives produced by some threat detection technology can obscure real threats. Due to the fact that any interaction with the fictitious systems is suspicious and warrants further investigation, deception technology has low false positive rates.
- Threat intelligence: Highly instrumented deceptive environments frequently gather data about the tools, tactics, and activities of the attacker. The protections a company has against cyberattacks can be assessed and strengthened with the help of this data.
- Simple Scalability: Virtual machines are frequently used in the implementation of deceptive environments. This makes it possible to swiftly recover the systems following an attack and to construct enormous settings that are misleading.
What Cybersecurity Attacks Can Be Detected by Threat Deception Technology?
The goal of threat deception technology is to entice an attacker into a false environment so that the corporate security team can watch them. These misleading surroundings’ nature allows them to identify a variety of possible cyberattacks, such as:
- Vulnerability Exploits: Organisations can identify attackers searching for and exploiting flaws by intentionally configuring honeypots to include certain vulnerabilities.
- Account Takeover: To obtain access to user accounts, cybercriminals employ techniques like credential stuffing. User accounts with weak passwords that hackers can access and use to carry out additional assaults that the business can keep an eye on are examples of deceptive environments.
- Privilege Escalation: An attacker may try to increase the privileges of a user account once they have gained access to it. Common forms of privilege escalation can be enabled and monitored in deceptive contexts.
- Attacks by Phishing: Attackers frequently use spear phishing and phishing assaults to penetrate an organisation’s network. It is possible to set up phoney email accounts so that they will open attachments and click links automatically, leading attackers to honeypot systems.
Conclusion A company can benefit from early attack detection and insight into the tools and strategies used by attackers through the use of deception technology. An organisation must have a thorough understanding of deceptive services and honeypots, as well as the capacity to utilise the information they offer, in order to accomplish this. Check out the cyber security class online to learn more.
