Necessary security control tools
As usual, this week we continue with the 6 elements to consider when implementing a SOC. Today it is the turn for the second-last item on our list, and it is the "necessary security control tools".
It is important for small organizations with limited budget and time to have the essential tools to create a SOC that can be supported by a small team. Any SOC must be able to protect critical data and systems against cyber threats.
As we have seen, some of the essential SOC activities include asset discovery, vulnerability management, behavioral monitoring, intrusion detection and monitoring through SIEM, i.e., event and security information management. Consequently, let's talk about those security control tools that must exist in a SOC in order to fulfill these essential activities. These tools are the following:
Firewalls, equipment that can be software or hardware and are responsible for managing traffic, allowing or denying it based on predefined security rules and policies. Depending on the security situation, the rules include whitelisting or blacklisting IP addresses.
Similarly, there are web application firewalls (WAF), these tools have advanced features that provide methods to detect malicious activity directed at a web application by analyzing HTTP/HTTPS request packets and traffic patterns.
Mail Gateway is a tool that helps scan incoming and outgoing emails for malicious content before allowing them to move from one component to another. The main features of this tool are, spam filtering, virus and malware blocking, and phishing protection.
Intrusion Detection or Intrusion Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS). These security solutions recognize attacks based on signatures of known malicious activity; for example, an IDS alerts users of the detection of malicious network traffic, while an IPS attempts to prevents the system from being compromised.
Endpoint antivirus (anti-malware) is another control tool, and this is a type of software designed to help detect, prevent and remove malware on end-user devices. Some of them are able to detect worms, bots, Trojans and more by identifying suspicious files that match their intelligence knowledge base.
Depending on the type of traffic, users and locations, there are both stream-based and proxy-based antivirus simultaneously. Flow-based antivirus offers higher performance, while proxy-based solutions are useful for mitigating stealthy malicious code.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions: these tools are installed on client systems, computers or servers. The software enhances data security by executing rule sets that provide detection, alerting, analysis, threat classification, intelligence and additional antivirus protection. This protection encompasses real-time monitoring and detection of threats, including those that may not be easily recognized or defined by standard antivirus.
Importantly, stealthy threats evade detection and hide as known processes and files, spreading over time. While security analysts try to classify and investigate other detections that are alerted.
However, the XDR tool breaks through these drawbacks by using a holistic approach to detection and response. XDR collects and correlates detections and deep activity data across multiple layers of security, such as email, server, cloud and network activities.
Significantly, all of these tools are sending logs to SIEM, through the type of integration supported by your solution.
Network segmentation control divides a network into multiple segments or subnets, each acting as its own network, this action allows network administrators to control traffic flow between subnets based on granular policies. Organizations use segmentation to improve monitoring, increase performance, troubleshoot technical problems and, most importantly, improve security.
The principle of least privilege requires technical and policy controls to ensure that users, processes and systems access only the resources necessary to perform their assigned functions.
Finally we have patch management, which is a process to check your operating systems, software, applications and network components for vulnerabilities that could allow a malicious user to access your system and cause damage.
If we comply with these basic points within our security scheme, we will have an efficient approach to provide a defense of your network, systems and ultimately your data and information in a corporate environment.
Hi! I am Kendra Mazara
Senior Information Security Specialist | MBA | Cofounder MujeresTICs RD | Speaker | LinkedIn Learning Instructor
