LogRhythm Threat Lifecycle Management Whitepaper 2016*

THE THREAT LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK Preface Globally, sophisticated cyber-attacks are compromising organizations at an unprecedented rate and with devastating consequences. Modern attackers, including criminal organizations, ideological groups, nation states and other advanced threat actors are motivated by a wide range of objectives that include financial gain, industrial espionage, cyber-warfare, and terrorism. These attacks are often very expensive for compromised organizations, costing each company an average of USD $7.7M.1 The odds that your organization will be compromised are high. In fact, a recent report indicates that 76 percent of surveyed organizations were compromised in 2015. 2 Against this backdrop, organizations increasingly expect that it’s not if they will be compromised, but rather when will they be compromised. The Modern Cyber Threat Pandemic 3 Regulatory fines, public relations costs, breach notification and protection costs, and other consequences of large-scale data breaches are well-understood. But the effects of a cyberattack can ripple for years, resulting in a wide range of “hidden” costs—many of which are intangible impacts tied to reputation damage, operational disruption or loss of proprietary information or other strategic assets.4 -Deloitte, Beneath the Surface of a Cyberattack Ponemon 2015 Cost of Cyber Crime Study CyberEdge 2016 Cyberthreat Defense Report 3 Symantec, Underground black market: Thriving trade in stolen data, malware, and attack service. November 20, 2015; Medscape, Stolen EHR Charts Sell for $50 Each on Black Market, April 28, 2014 4 Deloitte, Beneath the Surface of a Cyberattack, 2016 1 2 WWW.LOGRHYTHM.COM PAGE 3 THE THREAT LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK A New Approach is Required The traditional approach to cybersecurity has been to use a prevention-centric strategy focused on blocking attacks. While prevention-centric approaches do stop many threats, many of today’s advanced and motivated threat actors are circumventing these defenses with creative, stealthy, targeted, and persistent attacks that often go undetected for significant periods of time. In addition, modern organizations are exposed through increasing interconnectedness—the growing use of cloud-based applications, the proliferation of mobile technologies, and the Internet of Things (IoT)—that blends the use of consumer and corporate technologies. The result is a rapidly growing attack surface that is increasingly difficult for your security and operational teams to protect without impacting the core business of your organization. In response to the shortcomings of prevention-centric security strategies and the challenges of securing an increasingly complex and open IT environment, many organizations are progressively shifting their resources and focusing towards strategies centered on threat detection and response. Gartner estimates that by 2020, 60 percent of enterprise information security budgets will be allocated for rapid detection and response approaches, up from less than 20 percent in 2015. 5 Security teams that are able to reduce their mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR) can materially decrease their risk of experiencing a high-impact cyber incident or data breach. Unfortunately, the growing complexity of IT and an increasingly hostile threat landscape has made it challenging to realize reductions in MTTD and MTTR. Most organizations are struggling to keep up with the volume of security alerts—many of them false positives or of low quality. This has created organizational “alarm fatigue” that inhibits security teams from identifying real threats that could lead to a damaging cyber-incident or data breach. Security teams also often lack effective tools, automation, and processes for streamlining threat investigations and incident response. These challenges are evidenced when looking at recent data breaches. Too often, the time it took for the affected organization to discover and respond to the data breach was measured in months, and in some cases years, with the average time to detection being 146 days in 2015.6 Faster Detection and Response Reduces Risk Gartner estimates that by 2020, 60 percent of enterprise information security budgets will be allocated for rapid detection and response approaches, up from less than 20 percent in 2015.5 5 6 Shift Cybersecurity Investment to Detection and Response, Gartner, 2016 M-Trends 2016, Mandiant Consulting WWW.LOGRHYTHM.COM PAGE 4
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