Cyber Security - The KEY Infrastructure

It's a familiar scene from a blockbuster movie. The hero races against time to tackle the bad guys intent on taking down some form of critical national infrastructure – let's say a nuclear power plant. With seconds to spare, the hero saves the day, usually dispatching the evil plotters and lightening the mood with a quick one liner.

This may seem like an unusual scenario, but the reality is our critical national infrastructure is under a more insidious and arguably dangerous form of attack each day. Already, there is a real threat that the vulnerabilities of critical national infrastructures could fall into the wrong hands.?

Government Cyber Security

Experts have long warned that these systems are vulnerable to physical attack by extremists, but now governments are warning the sensitive computer systems that maintain these networks are increasingly being attacked by hackers. These sophisticated and well funded criminals ultimately look to attack companies through any vulnerability- such as inserting harmful malware on a company network. This malware may quietly collect sensitive information as it traverses the network, harvest users' Internet sessions looking for passwords, send corporate documents or databases to cybercriminals outside the party, or simply sit waiting for an external trigger to take a particular action such as deleting critical business information.

Eventually, this malware could be used to take control of the world's large scale industrial control systems such as power plants and dams – eventually even extending to transport.

Cybercrime Software

Today, most companies now understand sophisticated cyber-criminals have rendered traditional perimeter defences, like firewalls, VPNs, and antivirus and malware tools ineffective. It's crucial these organisations now take a holistic approach to cyber security and stop trying to fight new professional criminals with perimeter security alone. Firewalls are important when keeping out known threats, but they are only one tool against increasingly professional cyber criminals prepared to use any means possible to beach a network.

Cyber Threat Analytics

Cybercriminals need a vulnerability to exploit and time to exploit it. The process of exploring a victims network leaves traces in network-activity logs, and these traces can be picked up with the right security-analytics approach.

Cyber Threat Analytics can identify cyber breaches that have already compromised defences and now lay hidden inside the network.

Whereas conventional security solutions look for signs of malware code, security-analytics techniques monitor network activity for telltale signs of cybercriminal behaviour. This activity might be documented within the logs of security software, network hardware devices, or user behaviour – all holding essential information that forms a powerful body of evidence that companies can leverage to fight back against unwanted intruders.

It does this by rapidly ingesting and processing these network logs using advanced machine learning techniques. It helps organisations baseline normal network activity, then quickly detect anomalies that suggest criminal activity is occurring.

Gaining a new understanding of normal is key to addressing the abnormal – and good information is fundamental to making this happen. Using analytics to uncover anomalies hidden within the network allows organisations to act early in the threat timeline, before extensive damage can be done, or even control loss of these critical systems.

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