Advantages and challenges of advanced threat detection products

Today's malware will use some clever technologies to circumvent the traditional signature-based anti-malware detection. Intrusion prevention systems, web page filtering, and Anti-Virus products are no longer able to defend against new categories of attackers. Such new categories combine complex malware with persistent remote access features, the objective is to steal sensitive company data for a long period of time.

The new threat detection tool tries to use sandboxing technology to provide an advanced Malware detection system. Many companies provide such products, including FireEye Inc, Damballa Inc, Palo Alto Networks, and NetWitness. All these systems promise to be almost completely protected against malware threats. In this article, we will discuss the technologies used by today's advanced malware and threat detection products, focusing on their advantages and unsolved challenges.

Threat detection: Sandbox Technology

Currently, sandbox is the main technology used by various advanced Malware detection products. Sandbox uses a variety of technologies to identify potential malware threats. First, it uses network traffic analysis to discover potential threats on the network and analyze its behavior types and suspicious files. These files are then reviewed and analyzed in a virtual machine environment, which uses a set of different operating systems and software versions. Finally, the changes made to the virtual machine environment by these files will be recorded, and a report will be generated to show the changes to each part of the virtual operating system and software. Based on this report, these files can be identified as malware.

The advantage of this method is that no matter which technology is used by malware to hide its carrier, it will always need to influence the operating system in some way, so that the sandbox software will detect it. Sandbox technology involves two phases: first detecting threats and then sending them to the sandbox. This can greatly reduce false positives and false negatives.

When a file enters the network, it will be analyzed by the sandbox software, for example, when the file is downloaded from the website. Threat detection products based on Sandbox technology recombine web page traffic, detect suspicious data in the Code and assign priority to them. Suspicious data traffic is sent to the sandbox within a specific threshold. Data leakage prevention based on network traffic analysis minimizes threats on the network. When the initial infection of malware is used to download more malware, it will be blocked by "Callback. In addition, because the sandbox technology is not signature-based, it can detect new varieties of malware. Once malware information is found, it is shared to all devices so that threats can be detected as quickly as possible.

Threat detection product selection process

These threat detection tools are not cheap, so you need to consider them carefully to ensure that the selected threat detection system is suitable for your organization. It is necessary to take the time to try out the free detection products provided by the vendor so that you can know whether the system is valuable to your organization. It is important to note that once you select a product, you need to promote it to all offices. Remote branches are often the initial targets of attacks. You also need to deploy threat detection software to these locations.

We also need to know that none of the products is omnipotent. These systems cannot analyze SSL encrypted traffic, and in most cases, they can only analyze threats to the Windows environment. Nor can they detect malware installed on employee's personal devices. However, network traffic analysis, which is used to prevent data leaks, is a great feature that can help deal with some weaknesses.

Defense in depth is the key to preventing malware and advanced persistent threats from penetrating your network, stealing secrets and confidential data. These new technologies should be regarded as a layer of defense. Enterprises should establish an excellent event response expert team to study them, and the Team should take frequent penetration tests to simulate real attacks. Highly complex opponents will ignore the defense provided by threat detection products and constantly attack you. As these types of products become increasingly popular, strong attackers will try to develop technologies to cheat sandbox software. This is like a step in a military competition. Enterprises need to invest in multi-layer defense to ensure the security of their assets and sensitive data.