What is Deception in Cybersecurity?

February 23, 2024
Doron Kolton

Deception technology is the cornerstone of proactive cyber defense. It works by employing active defense, a proactive approach that focuses on understanding and managing threats. Advanced cyber deception plays a crucial role in enhancing the security posture against sophisticated attacks, particularly in real-time detection and containment of ransomware. It allows organizations to mislead, detect, and defeat cyber-attacks, and then quickly return to normal IT operations. The primary purpose of cyber deception is to divert the attacker’s attention away from the actual crowned jewels of your organization. Most importantly, deception technology provides insight into malicious activities that could otherwise evade detection within IT networks.

Definition and Explanation of Deception Technology

Deception technology is a sophisticated cybersecurity solution that employs decoys, lures, and other deceptive tactics to detect and thwart cyber threats. By creating a network of fake assets that mimic real ones, this technology misleads attackers, diverting their attention away from genuine targets. This approach enhances threat detection and provides invaluable insights into attacker behavior. As part of a comprehensive cyber defense strategy, deception technology empowers security teams to identify and respond to advanced threats that might otherwise slip through traditional security measures.

Why Does an Organization need Deception Technology?

Today’s digital adversaries are more sophisticated, and they do significantly more damage to the businesses they impact. Modern cyberattackers also hide deep within digital environments for longer periods of time. This typically gives them plenty of time to study vulnerabilities, and ultimately wreak extreme havoc for unwary organizations.

In Active Deception technology decoys mimic legitimate elements of your IT environment – such as endpoints, network, active directory and IoT – so the intruder believes he is interacting with the real thing. This gives your IT security team the near real-time ability to study an adversary’s behavior and detect, analyze, or defend against zero-day and advanced cyberattacks.

Benefits of Deception Technology

Early and Improved Threat Detection: Deception tools have the ability to provide early warning systems. The interaction between attackers and these deceptive decoys triggers alerts, helping to detect threats and preventing potential damage.
Reduces Detection Time: The early identification of intruders massively reduces the duration attackers remain undetected within the network.
Insights into Adversaries: Deception technology allows you to get insights into the attackers’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). This allows organizations to craft more appropriate defense strategies.
Lower number of False Positives: A lot of traditional security operations and systems trigger multiple false positives while deception technology focuses on real threats. The idea was that real users would never interact with decoys, making it easy to identify attackers.
Layered on Existing Defense: Cybersecurity deception acts as a layer to other existing defense tools like EDR, NDR and XDR allowing you to add an extra layer of defense, making it harder for attackers to achieve their goals.
Internal Threat Intelligence Creation: Organizations with substantial resources utilize internal threat intelligence creation as part of their threat detection and response strategies. This approach, especially when combined with deception technologies, helps identify advanced threats more effectively while benefiting from low false-positive alerts.
Advanced Threat hunting: Capable of identifying sophisticated threats, including zero-day attacks and insider threats, deception technology addresses vulnerabilities that traditional security measures might miss.
Improved Security Controls: When integrated with existing security controls, deception technology enhances their effectiveness, contributing to a more robust and comprehensive security posture.

How Deception Technology Works

Deploy Decoys & Lures: Strategically place deceptive elements across the network that mimic valuable assets.
Entice Attackers: These decoys appear legitimate, drawing attackers into engagement.
Monitor in Real Time: The system tracks every move the attacker makes, collecting detailed behavioral data.
Analyze & Gather Intelligence: Security teams gain insights into attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures.
Strengthen Defenses: Using collected intelligence, organizations refine security strategies to proactively mitigate future threats.

Threat Intelligence and Deception Technology

Threat intelligence is a cornerstone of effective deception technology. By leveraging cyber deception technology, security teams gain a deeper understanding of the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) employed by attackers. This technology provides a wealth of information on attacker behavior, enabling security teams to enhance their threat intelligence and anticipate future threats. The insights gathered from deception technology allow for the creation of internal threat intelligence tailored to the specific needs and threat landscape of the organization. This proactive approach ensures that security teams are not only reacting to threats but are also prepared to counteract new and evolving cyber threats.

What Are the Key Capabilities of Deception Technology Against Advanced Threats?

Deception technology helps you identify, and block sophisticated digital adversaries before they can damage critical infrastructure and exfiltrate sensitive data.

Your deception platform must:

Enable you to deceive cybercriminals and lure them into a trap and non-winning environment
Leverages cyber deception technology to enhance traditional security measures, improving detection and response to both known and unknown ransomware variants
Keep cybercriminals and other rogue actors off-balance and ineffective at all levels of cyber warfare
Improve your ability to detect and track their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs)
Dynamically change and re-address the cyber terrain from endpoint to cloud
Mislead attackers by providing constantly changing Deception decoys and lures to deceive adversaries

Implementor's Guide to Deception Technologies

Use Cases of Deception Technology

Deception technology is one of the most powerful add-on cyber defense layers which helps detect threats and anomalous behaviour at various stages of cyber-attacks. The threats that it can help defend include:

Insider threats: Deception technology facilitates the detection and mitigation of insider threats by fostering a dynamic environment that makes it easier to spot unusual behavior. Decoy files or credentials, for example, have the potential to lure hostile insiders into disclosing their true intentions or attempting to gain unauthorized access. Deception decoys also lessen the chance that insider attackers will be able to successfully exfiltrate data.

Ransomware attacks: The use of advanced cyber deception helps add a layer of defense which probes attackers to interact with decoys instead of legitimate assets. This helps them get captured before they can make any demands to your organization. Advanced cyber deception is particularly effective in real-time detection and containment of sophisticated ransomware attacks, especially when combined with AI and machine learning to address both known and zero-day ransomware variants.

Credential Theft: By dispersing false credentials throughout the network that, if hacked, bring attackers into a monitored and analyzed environment, deception technology prevents credential theft. Furthermore, bait accounts and honey tokens operate as early warning signs of credential harvesting attempts, enabling businesses to quickly safeguard their assets.

Zero-Day Exploits: The use of deception technologies helps identify zero-day exploits by providing adversaries with attractive targets that are constantly watched. When these decoys are attempted to be exploited, alarms are set out, allowing security teams to quickly investigate and take action—even in the lack of particular signs or compromise indicators.

Fidelis Deception^® Technology Is The Answer

Fidelis Deception^® enables you to easily reshape the attack surface and lure, detect and defend earlier in the attack lifecycle through active defense.

With Fidelis Deception^®, you can automatically deploy traps and lures to slow down, confuse, and stop attackers in their tracks.

With Fidelis Deception^® natively integrated into Fidelis Elevate^®, the XDR platform, SOC teams can shift to a proactive cyber defense and easily find, deceive, and neutralize advanced cyber threats.

The Fidelis Difference

Fidelis Deception^® Technology Allows Security Teams To

Create and deploy authentic deception layers automatically
Expose your attacker in minutes to protect your organization’s valuable assets
Attract and trap cyber adversaries, malicious insiders, and automated malware at the deception layer
Leverages cyber deception technology to enhance traditional security measures against ransomware, effectively detecting and responding to both known and unknown variants
Mislead attackers by using decoys and lures, deceiving adversaries into thinking they have gained access to a network
Reshape the attack surface to change the cyber game and achieve a different battle outcome.

Trap Adversaries Earlier with Fidelis Deception

Download the solution brief now to reclaim control and change the rules of engagement by re-shaping the attack surface.

Proactive Cyber Defense With Fidelis Deception

Fidelis Deception^® has been combined with EDR and NDR solutions to create Fidelis Elevate, an open active XDR platform.

Our Active XDR platform brings together three powerful cybersecurity technologies to help organizations change the game to their advantage. Fidelis customers can seamlessly create clones of their subnets and assets that can be populated with fake user accounts and directories and then lay down breadcrumbs for anyone who is trying to discover the network and give a warning when an adversary is on the network.

Integrated advanced cyber deception capabilities make it easier to detect, respond, and neutralize sophisticated cyber-attacks while adding cost and complexity to the attacker – making it harder for them to cause damage. Not only can organizations counter current cyberattacks, but they can learn more about their digital adversaries and be prepared for new attacks in the future. Regardless of the tactics or technology adversaries use, Fidelis Deception will always be there to detect threats at various stages of cyber-attacks and lead them away from your assets.

Frequently Ask Questions

What is an example of cyber deception?

Sometimes cybersecurity hackers use deception. Using IP addresses a malware attack can also recycle IP addresses from other low-profile attacks such as this example. The danger is seen in the form of less frequent attacks.

What is cyber deception coverage?

A cyber deception extension provides compensation to you, for any loss of any money that has occurred as a result of cyber deception committed by your company. This sponsorship may cover losses resulting from the telecommunication fraud.

What is the difference between honeypot and deception?

The main difference between honeypot architectural designs and next-generation methods is that they are more effective at mimicking real-world scenarios compared to other approaches to deceptive practices. Cybercriminals have discovered that honeypots do things differently because their behavior doesn’t match a true regulated environment.

About Author

Doron Kolton

Doron held executive and management roles in cyber security and software development for over 25 years. He serves now as the CTO for the Deception at Fidelis Security. Doron founded TopSpin Security in 2013 building an enhanced architecture providing accurate detection with minimal overhead; he was the CEO of TopSpin Security until the company was acquired by Fidelis Security. Previously he served as Vice President of Products and Engineering at Breach Security acquired by Trustwave defining and developing advanced Web Application Firewall. Before that he had several roles in Motorola Semiconductor Israel including leading the software development for the company.

One Platform for All Adversaries

See Fidelis in action. Learn how our fast and scalable platforms provide full visibility, deep insights, and rapid response to help security teams across the World protect, detect, respond, and neutralize advanced cyber adversaries.