Stopping the Next Wave of Cyberattacks with Collective Defense
In the wake of this looming shadow of cyberattacks across all critical sectors, it is time to rethink how we secure our systems and networks beyond just adding more complex layers of IT and security infrastructure.
Cyber threats have become part and parcel of conducting business operations using digital technologies. Even organizations that have not yet faced the first-hand impacts of cyberattacks can any day become victims of a software or hardware supply chain hack, ransomware attack, or a third-party vendor compromise. Gary C. Tate, regional VP of APJ, Cyware, shares the need for collective defense to tackle the wave of cyberattacks.
The rise of well-armed and well-funded nation-state threat actors capable of causing havoc to public and private sector organizations is well documented. In the wake of this looming shadow of cyberattacks across all critical sectors, it is time to rethink the way we secure our systems and networks beyond just adding more complex layers of IT and security infrastructure.
See More: How Hackers Hack and the Tools They Use
What is Collective Defense?
Collective defense is a collaborative cybersecurity strategy achieved through information sharing and coordinated threat response between organizations, both internally and externally, and across different industries.
Collective defense provides a fresh outlook toward building cyber resilience for all organizations regardless of their scale, industry, geographical location, or other factors. It allows organizations to reshape their cyber defenses and strategy through collaboration and threat intelligence sharing with stakeholders at every level, including industry peers, business partners, vendors, regulators, law enforcement agencies, researchers, and others.
It is worth noting that the concept of collective defense is not entirely new. We have seen it come into play frequently throughout world history when groups of allied nations joined forces to overcome common enemies. In the modern context, the collective defense cybersecurity strategy is gaining prominence due to the rise of state-sponsored actors, ransomware operators, and other such adversaries that threaten to disrupt organizations across many critical industries. When a key organization in one of the critical industries gets targeted, it can have cascading effects on many of its partners, suppliers, and clients. Thus, we must ensure that no organizations are left alone in their fight to ward off cyber intruders from their systems and networks.
Achieving Proactive, Intel-driven Defense
While the concept of a collective defense strategy powered by threat intelligence sharing sounds straightforward on paper, organizations face numerous challenges in putting together the right processes and technologies to aid SOC, incident response, and vulnerability management teams. Security teams need to leverage automation while
collecting, enriching, analyzing, and disseminating threat intelligence derived from the huge troves of structured and unstructured threat data ingested from various internal and external sources. This can help dramatically shorten the time required to take threat intelligence from just ideas to concrete defensive actions.
In a world where cyber threats are forcing security teams to devote massive amounts of time and resources to triaging or responding to threat alerts and incidents, the automated operationalization and sharing of threat intelligence can change the game by enabling them to predict threats before they impact their organization’s systems and networks. This not only reduces the chances of falling prey to cyberattacks but also helps prevent a variety of threats such as malware, vulnerabilities, threat actors, and attack campaigns from spiraling into potentially destructive events.
A collective defense approach enables organizations to share threat intelligence in real-time to help all stakeholders gain greater situational awareness, accurately identify the major cyber risks, and take the requisite mitigation actions to help secure their vital assets. It also enables the early detection and swift response against hidden threats by smartly coordinating threat hunting operations using threat intelligence insights gained from other organizations that face similar threats. By smartly leveraging strategic, tactical, operational, and technical intelligence, security decision-makers can optimise their resource allocation and gain comprehensive visibility over their threat environment. When security automation and collaboration are added to the mix, organizations can achieve several other positive outcomes, such as reduced chances of analyst fatigue, better prioritization of the most relevant threats, and elevating the maturity of their security operations as a whole.
Stages of Collective Defense
While collective defense within an organization involves information sharing and collaboration between different security functions, senior management, and other stakeholders, the same model can be scaled up to enact defensive strategies based on shared security priorities for organizations across specific industries or even at a global level.
Automating threat intelligence analysis and sharing at scale can help truly deliver on the shared security goals and priorities within an industry to bring public and private enterprises, suppliers, partners, clients, and government entities together to battle against a wide range of cyber threats and adversaries. Today, we have numerous enterprises, MSSPs, government agencies, and sharing communities (ISACs, ISAOs, CERTs, regulators) that are building out bridges to exchange threat intelligence in real time and perform a vital role in enabling this mind-shift towards collective defense.
However, collective defense does not have to be limited to sectoral collaboration. Sharing communities across different sectors can also work together to leverage the real-time intelligence obtained from specific threats targeting weaknesses in the underlying technology infrastructure that organizations across those different sectors share. By combining the best of global and local cybersecurity expertise and threat intelligence, we can build a collective defense network that goes beyond international boundaries and truly establishes a combined force involving all relevant stakeholders against the menace of organized cybercrime.
See More: Why OT Environments Are Getting Attacked And What Organizations Can Do About It
A Shared Cyber-Shield for the Future
Collective defense sets the stage for coordinated threat response against our most pressing cyber threats. In order to achieve this vision, organizations need to lay the foundations for information sharing and security collaboration within their internal teams, to begin with and then scale it up further to monitor and collectively defend against the risks faced by their external stakeholders. Organizations across the public and private sectors are increasingly recognizing the need for threat intelligence sharing, and the expansion of collaborative security initiatives is taking hold across the globe. By inculcating a collective defense mindset, organizations with varying levels of security expertise and resources can amplify their defensive capabilities to mount a proactive response against the most critical threats to their assets, operations, and business continuity.
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