Tools to help spot a network threat 

Distinguishing Between Normal Network Behavior and Potential Cyber Threats 

10/22/2024

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When it comes to monitoring network activity to identify suspicious actions, the difference between normal behaviors and potential threats isn’t as straightforward as it can seem. For most network security teams, the best way is to use analysis and detection methods that focus on behaviors and configuration changes. Why? Because those are the two strongest ways to detect bad actors, driven by processes, credentials, and network connections.

You can use multiple tools and methods to see how each actor’s behavior depends on and supports the others, as well as build a more complete picture of the actor’s operations. Here’s a quick overview of each of them.

Tools that help you spot normal behavior versus a network threat

First, it’s important to understand how to view behavior changes. A network has regular patterns—specific programs run, and certain data is accessed—so unusual network activity could be an indication of a security threat.

Heuristic Guardrails

Heuristic guardrails direct your focus to key observations (meaning important or unusual network activities) and artifacts–like files or logs– to detect threats and provide you with the most effective means of validating them.

Key Observations

Observing conditions and actions (key observations) is the most direct and trusted way to find and track those attempting to operate within your environment. Instead of just checking off boxes, you switch the focus to evaluating how conditions (like the time of day) and actions (like file access) match up with what you would expect to see when observing legitimate operations. For example, if you notice someone is accessing sensitive data late at night, that might be suspicious.

Then, you want to establish the full picture of what’s going on by identifying and verifying the point of origin, the agent, the context, the action, and the result of each behavior. This helps to understand whether you’re dealing with normal behavior or a threat. If you determine it is a threat, you can then formulate the most effective game plan for hunting and defense.

Authenticity of Data

To ensure the authenticity of observations and artifacts, it’s important to prioritize high-integrity data sources, such as memory collection and centralized logging. This provides you the ability to more accurately verify the authenticity of observations with content validation, construct validation, and abstraction.

Construct validation involves using different tools and techniques to identify patterns that might indicate a threat. Combined with abstraction–the process of generalizing and organizing data, events, or behaviors into higher-level patterns or categories–these work together to substantiate conclusions and expose the weak links in processes and methods used for analysis. This significantly increases the confidence of authenticity assessments by revealing key patterns only visible from higher ground.

Context and Meaning

We can’t analyze behaviors without considering the external factors that may be causing them. Certain internal factors can also result in the same or similar behaviors. And the completeness of analysis depends on understanding how these factors impact behaviors. Behaviors by themselves are not enough. We need context and meaning.

We need the context in which the behaviors are observed and displayed and the results of those behaviors to abstract out key observations and patterns. Again, understanding the context and meaning in which a behavior occurs is crucial for accurate analysis.

Contact us now to get more information on how to use these tools and strategies to detect threats in your network.