The network is the new frontline for cybersecurity

Corelight illuminates attacker footprints, giving security teams a chance to disrupt threats.

Cyberattacks continue to put mounting stress on the global economy, with ransomware payments alone topping a record-breaking $1 billion dollars in 2023. Additionally, today’s cyberattackers are also increasingly sophisticated infiltrators, leveraging network vulnerabilities to launch zero-day attacks—a cyberattack that exploits a software or hardware vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor—or social engineering techniques to get inside a network. Once inside, they can lurk undetected for months or even years. 

Consider the cautionary tale of one global hotel chain. For four years, cybercriminals roamed freely through its network, siphoning off sensitive data from millions of customers. When the breach was finally discovered, the damage was already done, costing the company more than $23 million in fines, huge losses in its stock price, and untold reputational damage. 

This wasn’t an isolated incident. The rapidly evolving threat landscape is quickly outpacing traditional defenses. In 2023, ransomware attacks surged by 55.5%, and supply chain attacks increased by 300%. The average cost of a data breach hit a record $4.45 million globally, with U.S. companies facing a staggering $9.48 million per incident. And while it’s tempting to attribute this surge solely to increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals, the reality is that the steady rise in successful attacks is also the result of organizations over-relying on endpoint, firewall, and other perimeter defenses.

Experts at Corelight, a leading global cybersecurity firm, have found the new frontline in the battle to secure an organization’s infrastructure: its computer network, or more specifically, what is inside the perimeter defense. The network—including physical or on-premise networks as well as those in the cloud—has become a fertile hunting ground for threat actors. Corelight’s answer to turning the tide in the ever-present cybersecurity battle is to help organizations first master their networks.

Building a single source of truth

From a security perspective, the network is the ultimate source of truth. Every action on the network, legitimate or otherwise, leaves evidence behind in the form of digital signatures, timestamps, logs, and traffic patterns. These are the equivalent of digital fingerprints. But finding that evidence among millions of signals and petabytes of data is like trying to find needles in haystacks the size of small planets. 

Network detection and response (NDR) is a category of security products designed to find those needles by providing evidence in the form of data and detections from the network itself. Corelight leads this revolution, leveraging decades of data and insights from elite defenders in open-source communities to analyze vast amounts of network data and identify hidden threats. Data from the network is fused with detections to provide context and speed response. 

Corelight’s NDR platform is used today by major airlines, financial institutions, power companies, and a large number of government agencies around the world. The firm is also used to help secure the global Black Hat Network Operations Centers, one of the most demanding and highly targeted networks in the world.

Answering the call to action

Quite simply, it’s time to embrace the power of the network. By implementing NDR technologies, the battlefield can be illuminated and the tables turned on would-be attackers. Corelight provides the tools and expertise needed to help companies disrupt network attacks before they occur. Because in the invisible war of cybersecurity, a company’s survival may very well depend on it.

Note: This article was supplied by Corelight.