Effective incident response is a top priority for organizations to minimize the impact of cyber threats.
Quick detection and response to attacks or threats are crucial for securing the network and the organization’s overall cybersecurity posture.
Incident response planning typically includes identifying, investigating, containing, eradicating, recovering, and analyzing the attack to prevent future breaches. The response times directly affect how swiftly and effectively a breach can be mitigated.
Traditionally, PCAP (Packet Capture) methods collect all network packets for threat analysis, providing detailed insights into network traffic. However, they can be resource-intensive, may miss encrypted traffic, and require significant storage space, making it difficult for security teams to efficiently filter through large amounts of data. This delays the response and can worsen the threat’s aftereffects, much like how delayed treatment can worsen a medical condition.
To address these challenges, the most effective approach for quick threat detection and implementing security measures is to use metadata-driven security analytics solutions. These solutions track data transfers, communications, and overall network activities, enabling faster detection and more efficient incident response.
What is Network Metadata?
Metadata refers to information about other data without exposing its actual content. In the context of network security, metadata refers to the data about the packets that pass through the network.
Read more: Importance of Network Metadata
Information includes:
IP addresses, ports, protocols, timestamps, and session durations.
Describes:
Metadata answers the who, what, when, where, and how of network communication. It includes details like the source and destination of data, the type of communication, when it happens, the path it takes, and the methods used to send the data.
By using metadata, organizations can track and analyze network activity in real-time, providing immediate visibility into network behavior and activities.
The Role of Metadata in Incident Response
- Faster Detection & Real-Time Analysis: Metadata enables security teams to quickly identify potential threats, including insider threats, by analyzing network activity in real-time, accelerating threat detection.
- Proactive Issue Prevention: By acting swiftly on unusual activity, teams can address vulnerabilities and prevent similar threats from reoccurring.
- Enhanced Forensic Analysis: Metadata delivers valuable insights for investigating past incidents, allowing teams to assess the attack's impact and strengthen defenses moving forward.
- Comprehensive Visibility: It provides a complete view of network activity, improving event correlation and overall threat detection across all communication channels.
Limitations of Using Basic Metadata
Most network threat detection tools capture basic network metadata, which typically focuses on malware detection.
In the current advanced cyber world, attackers employ a variety of tactics, beyond just malware, to breach systems and steal data.
Once they gain access, they may:
- Install web shells to maintain control.
- Steal and crack legitimate credentials.
- Hijack normal applications, such as web browsers or word processors, for reconnaissance.
- Hide data in hidden directories for later exfiltration.
- Encrypt or disguise data to sneak it out of the network, and more.
To detect and respond to sophisticated threats quickly, organizations must choose a network threat detection tool with ‘rich metadata’ capturing and analysis capabilities.
What is Rich Metadata?
Basic metadata offers a broad view, while rich metadata provides deeper insights into each session. It tracks important details like who created a suspicious file when it was created, and if it contains sensitive data. Thereby, it helps security teams to take immediate action, preventing issues from escalating.
To capture rich metadata, organizations need to adopt an advanced network security solution like Fidelis Network®.
Discover how rich, historical metadata can reveal hidden network security threats and transform your detection and investigation efforts.
- Why rich metadata is crucial for stopping network attacks
- The limitations of full-packet capture and NetFlow data
- Four deep insights metadata can uncover
Let’s explore how Fidelis Network® ensures deep network security analysis and aids in incident response using its rich metadata-capturing capabilities.
Fidelis Network®: Ensuring Deep Network Security Analysis and Incident Response with Rich Metadata
Fidelis Network® is a powerful Network Detection and Response (NDR) platform that provides complete visibility and fast, real-time network security incident response. By capturing and analyzing rich metadata, it helps incident response teams quickly identify, contain, and address threats before they can spread, thereby reducing potential damage.
This approach takes network security analysis to the next level, providing a much deeper and more detailed understanding of network activity compared to traditional security tools. While most standard network tools focus on basic metadata, such as source IP, destination IP, and URL, Fidelis goes far beyond that by collecting detailed data from within network sessions and uncovering hidden attacker behavior and advanced threats.
How Fidelis Network® Works with Rich Metadata for Incident Response
Fidelis Network® uses its Deep Session Inspection® technology to gather rich metadata about various types of network traffic, including web sessions, email communications, and file transfers.
The system collects a variety of attributes that are:
- Application- and Protocol-Level Metadata: Information on what type of applications and protocols are in use (e.g., web pages accessed, file types transferred, social media activity, etc.).
- Content-Level Metadata: Detailed information about files, including document authorship, file types, creation dates, attachments, and more.
Content-Level Metadata: Detailed information about files, including document authorship, file types, creation dates, attachments, and more.
- Has a suspicious document or executable been transmitted before?
- Who created a document, and when?
- Does the document contain any malicious attachments or sensitive information?
- Was there any unauthorized access to critical files?
- Who else in the company has a copy of the document?
The Benefits of Collecting and Analyzing Rich Metadata with Fidelis Network®
- Faster Detection: With detailed session-level information, analysts can identify suspicious behavior much more quickly than with traditional tools that only collect high-level data.
- Operational Efficiency: By collecting rich metadata at a fraction of the cost, Fidelis Network® helps organizations streamline security operations and maximize available resources.
- Historical Data Review: Applying new threat intelligence to historical metadata allows organizations to investigate past incidents, enabling thorough forensic analysis (read more) and determining whether they were compromised by previously unknown threats.
- Multi-Vector Attack Detection: Fidelis enhances the detection of multi-vector attacks by piecing together attack stages across different vectors, providing a comprehensive view of the incident.
- Automation and Speed: While manual analysis remains important, much of the metadata collection and analysis process is automated, significantly reducing the time needed for investigation.
Overall, Fidelis enables even Tier 1 analysts to perform at the level of more experienced analysts and accelerate incident detection and response.
Additionally, if you need to enhance security and incident response across multiple layers, Fidelis Elevate® is a great option. It provides protection across network, endpoint, and cloud services layers, automating threat detection and incident response. This ensures that security teams not only gain deeper insights into network activity but also respond more quickly to emerging threats, leveraging rich metadata to simplify investigations and containment.
Learn how Fidelis Elevate® empowers your incident response by rapidly detecting threats, automating responses, and minimizing damage.
Explore the datasheet to learn how Fidelis Elevate®:
- Detect threats and compromised data instantly
- Unify network, endpoint, and deception defenses for full visibility
- Automate responses and use playbooks to reduce attacker dwell time
- Deliver actionable insights to resolve security incidents quickly
Final Thoughts
By combining historical and real-time metadata analysis, Fidelis Network® helps security teams detect and contain incidents faster, enabling them to respond to emerging threats before they escalate. Whether it’s early detection of ransomware or tracking the steps of a sophisticated exploit like the Angler Exploit Kit, Fidelis provides organizations with the insights needed to stop threats swiftly. By leveraging rich metadata, organizations can significantly improve their incident response, empowering security teams to contain threats rapidly and ultimately preventing future breaches, while protecting the network from evolving threats.
