What is NDR?
Network Detection and Response (NDR) is a cybersecurity approach that focuses on monitoring network traffic to detect, analyze, and respond to threats in real-time. It provides visibility into network activities, helping to identify malicious behaviors that might bypass traditional security measures.
Gartner defines Network Detection and Response (NDR) as a combination of machine learning, advanced threat analytics and rule-based detection to detect suspicious activities on enterprise networks.
What does NDR stands for?
NDR stands for Network Detection and Response. It refers to technologies and methodologies designed to identify and mitigate cyber threats by analyzing network data for signs of malicious activities or anomalies.
Network: Refers to the interconnected nodes that facilitate communication between devices. In cybersecurity, it’s the infrastructure where data travels. It includes Local Area Networks (LANs) within each office, where computers, printers, and servers communicate using Ethernet cables or Wi-Fi. Or Wide Area Network (WAN) connections that link these LANs together.
Detection: Involves identifying anomalies, threats, or malicious activities within the network through continuous monitoring and analysis.
Response: The action taken to neutralize or mitigate detected threats, which can include isolating devices, blocking traffic, or alerting security teams.
What does network detection and response do?
NDR is used to enhance an organization’s cybersecurity posture by:
- Detecting advanced threats that might bypass traditional security measures.
- Providing detailed forensic data to understand the scope and impact of security incidents.
- Enabling rapid response to contain breaches, thereby reducing potential damage.
- Offering visibility into network behaviors to improve security policies and prevent future attacks.
What Threats do an NDR Solution Avert?
A good Network Detection and Response platform can help you avert a range of cyber threats in real time.
Here are some of the network threats that can be kept at bay with the NDR solution.
Malware and Ransomware
By examining network traffic patterns and behavioral anomalies, NDR solutions may identify the existence of malware and ransomware. Concerning these dangers, they can recognize abnormal file transfers, communication between command-and-control centers, and other signs of compromise.
Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)
Often orchestrated by nation-states or sophisticated cybercrime organizations. APTs are highly skilled, and covert cyberattacks. The more subtle indicators of APT activity, like anomalous data exfiltration patterns, lateral network movement, and sustained exploit attempts, can be detected by Network Detection and Response solutions.
Data Breaches
By monitoring network traffic for unauthorized access attempts, data exfiltration, and other suspicious behaviors that may point to a data breach in progress, NDR solutions assist in preventing data breaches. Utilizing network detector enables swift detection and management of data sources, mitigating their consequences and safeguarding sensitive information against compromise.
Insider Threats
NDR IT security solutions can detect unusual activity within the company’s network, such as staff members gaining access to resources without authorization, trying to get around security measures, or doing malevolent tasks. Insider attacks can be identified and neutralized before they cause substantial damage by using NDR solutions, which monitor user activity and correlate it with other network events.
Phishing and Social Engineering Attacks
NDR IT security solutions check email and online traffic for signs of fraudulent behavior, including phishing emails, shady URLs, and malware attachments. Through this network-level threat detection and blocking, NDR platforms assist in shielding users against phishing schemes and other forms of social engineering.
How Does Network Detection and Response (NDR) Work?
To understand what is network detection and response, it’s important to look at the process behind it. Network Detection and Response (NDR) uses advanced monitoring, analytics, and threat detection to protect an organization’s network against malicious activity. Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how NDR works:
Step 1. Data Collection and Traffic Monitoring
They constantly monitor all network traffic. They gather data such as:
- Packet Metadata Analysis: Capturing details about header like source, destination, and protocols used.
- Deep Packet Inspection: Capturing the entirety of data packets for deeper inspection.
- Flow Data: Summarizing traffic pattern between endpoint devices in the network.
This visibility across physical, virtual, cloud, and hybrid environments allows for this process.
Step 2. Behavioral Analysis
NDR security solutions use machine learning and AI-driven algorithms to identify anomalies based on baselines of normal network behavior. For example:
- Large volumes of unusual data transfers.
- Unknown communication behavior of internal systems.
- Traffic to or from malicious IP addresses.
This allows security analysts to spot threats that may not fit any known signatures or rules.
Step 3. Threat Detection and Correlation
NDR combines threat intelligence with its behavioral analysis. Key elements include:
- Indicators of Compromise (IOCs): Malicious domains, IPs, signatures, etc.
- Real-Time Analytics: Correlating anomalies with possible malicious activity.
For example, if an encrypted file is seen going out unexpectedly to a strange IP address, it will generate an alert.
Step 4. Response Prioritization
Not all alerts call for a response right away. NDR solutions categorize threats according to severity, potential impact, and likelihood of harm. By prioritizing incidents, it helps security teams to work on the critical ones first.
Step 5. Incident Response Automation
With a response mechanism of NDR systems, they have one of the best approaches to eliminate the threats. These include:
- Automated Threat containment: Instantly blocking malicious traffic or isolating compromised devices isolated to limit the spread of an attack, in real-time.
- Customizable Response: Security teams can create custom rules to define appropriate response protocols based on a specific incident type, allowing organizations to enforce tailored incident handling policies.
Such automated capabilities enable faster incident resolution and reduce the potential impact on the network.
Step 6. Continuous Improvement
Network detection response solutions evolve and adapt to emerging threats by learning from every detected and mitigated incident.
- They continuously incorporate new threat patterns and behaviors, enhancing their ability to detect similar threats in the future.
- Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) from previous events are updated and shared across the system, ensuring preparedness for future attacks.
By refining detection capabilities and strengthening their knowledge base, Network Detection and Response systems improve network defenses over time.
Through this step-by-step process, NDR solutions build a proactive and adaptive defense that dramatically improves an organization’s capacity to identify and mitigate advanced network threats.
The Technology Behind NDR Security
NDR solutions act as security analysts for your network. They keep an eye on your network traffic flows to identify unusual or suspicious activity that could indicate a cyberattack. Here’s a breakdown of the main techniques network detection and response tools use for Extended Detection and Response:
1. Machine Learning and Deep Learning
These advanced technologies form the core of many NDR solutions. Machine learning allows computers to gain knowledge from data without explicit programming. For NDR, these systems examine large volumes of network traffic to create a baseline of typical behavior. Any major departure from this baseline raises a red flag as a potential threat.
Deep learning, a specialized type of machine learning, has the ability to examine complex patterns making it even more effective at spotting subtle and sophisticated attacks.
2. Statistical Security Analysis
One more key tool in the NDR toolkit is statistical analysis. By comparing current traffic with past data, Network Detection and Response tools can find oddities that might point to a cyberattack.
An network detection response system can track the average login attempts from an IP address over time. If there is a sudden spike in attempts, it may indicate a brute-force attack. An NDR security system can monitor the average number of logins attempts from an IP address over time. If there is a sudden increase in attempts, it might mean a brute-force attack is happening.
3. Heuristics
Heuristic analysis detects threats by analyzing data for suspicious properties. In NDR solutions, heuristics extend the power of signature-based detection methods to look beyond known threats and spot suspicious characteristics found in unknown threats and modified versions of existing threats. Some network sandbox vendors position analysis of file-based malwares as a variation of network behavioral analysis.
4. Threat Intelligence Feeds
Threat intelligence feeds are streams of data that contain information about known cyber threats. Timely and actionable threat intelligence can thus help network detection response solutions identify known threats or, if one is detected, additionally contextualize for prioritization of risk against a detected network anomaly.
The limitation of threat intel feeds is that threat intel has to be actively procured, managed, and curated so that the information is relevant and timely to the enterprise, which can be beyond the scope for all except the most security mature enterprises.
5. Signatures
Signature-based detection techniques are dependent on specific Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) for known threats, allowing detection of those threats in the future. Although these signatures have successfully mitigated previous threats, they can no longer keep up with modern, sophisticated attack tactics.
The changing landscape of security has highlighted these methods even more. Today, nearly 75% of network traffic is encrypted — and this trend continues to increase, rendering signature-based tools ineffective by preventing content inspection that would be necessary to match certain categories of IOCs.
The response is a combination of automated and manual methods to analyze detections and determine – what happens next.
How Can NDR Help Improve Your Security Posture?
Perhaps the most important aspect of Network Detection Response tools is to determine security gaps in your environment and to correct your posture before an attack occurs. These capabilities include:
Decryption: To gain visibility into network traffic, decryption is highly advised. Most importantly, the use of decryption technology, that is integrated with the Network Detection and Response product, is required to fully gain the system’s detection and response capabilities.
Cyber Terrain: Network Detection and Response solutions can analyze network traffic to identify and classify assets and communication paths within the environment. Cybersecurity defense must start with an accurate understanding of the environment.
Risk Analysis: The combination of terrain and current events leads to a risk analysis. Risk includes alerts, incidents, vulnerabilities, and available mitigation paths in the environment.
Prevention Capabilities of Fidelis NDR
Download the whitepaper if you’re looking to improve your cybersecurity posture through advanced sensor technology.
- What Fidelis Network Includes?
- Threat Prevention Modes
- User Guide
What are the Benefits of Implementing NDR?
What is network detection and response’s biggest strength? Advanced threat attacks are designed to evade traditional preventative and detection techniques. Network Detection and Response solutions help identify cyber threats in network and cloud traffic. Some of the key benefits of NDR platforms are:
1. Improved Security Posture
Network detection and response tools provide excellent visibility into the network infrastructure and can monitor for unusual activity. They can detect various threats like ransomware, data breaches, insider threats, and unknown threats early on. Identifying and responding to these threats in real-time is crucial for a strong cybersecurity strategy.
2. Improved SOC Operational Efficiency
NDR solutions help Security Operations Center (SOC) teams by automating routine tasks and providing useful insights. This reduces alert fatigue and boosts productivity.
In order to identify network technologies, teams can focus on the most serious incidents and respond effectively to major threats. This improves their response times to incidents, and improves efficiency, allowing the security teams to devote more time to strategic initiatives and proactive threat hunting.
3. Real-time Attack Response
The real-time capabilities of Network Detection and Response are cardinal in effective attack response. It allows the organization to contain and mitigate damage rapidly upon detection of threats while they are still unraveling. Whether malignant traffic blocking, review network, isolation of compromised systems, or threats neutralization, NDR platforms avails the necessary tools to respond decisively.
4. Scalability and Flexibility
NDR solutions are flexible; they adapt to the evolving threat landscape and the growth of an organization. They scale to accommodate increasing network traffic and data volumes, ensuring that security remains robust as demands expand.
In addition, the flexibility and ability to integrate with earlier installed security infrastructure qualify NDR tools for total and unique visibility into threat detection and response.
5. Full Network Analysis Monitoring
6. Streamlined Threat Investigation
As NDR solutions store rich metadata that can be easily searched, it can provide valuable insights for threat detection, incident response, and advanced threat hunting.
NDR threat detection and response solutions go a long way in ensuring that organizations are empowered enough to improve the detection, response, and recovery from cyber-attacks.
Choosing the Right NDR Solution
1. Core Functionalities to Look For
When evaluating a Network Detection and Response (NDR) solution, it’s crucial to understand its core functionalities to enhance your organization’s cybersecurity posture effectively. Here’s a refined look at what to consider:
By focusing on these key functionalities, you can select an NDR IT security solution that not only enhances your network security but also integrates effectively with your existing measures. This approach provides a comprehensive defense against evolving cyber threats, ensuring robust network detection and response.
2. Integration with Existing Security Measures
Implementing an NDR solution should be carefully considered, especially in terms of its integration with the customer’s existing security stack to ensure seamless threat detection and response. This entails devices such as firewalls, endpoint detection and response, security information and event management, among others. Seek network detection and response vendors who natively support some level of integration or provide an open standard that makes it easy to interoperate.
3. Comparing Vendors and the Evaluation Process
The vendors, out of a sea of so many network detection and response vendors in the market, should be compared to find the right fit for your organization. Consider factors such as:
- Vendor reputation and market presence
- Pricing models and total cost of ownership (TCO)
- Availability of onboarding training and support
- Roadmap and future development plans
Engage potential suppliers to offer demonstrations and then conduct proof of concept to test the performance of the solution and its usability in your very own specific environment.
By taking into account these key aspects with a profound evaluation so that you can make a decision through an NDR solution that will enhance your organization’s security posture and help in the fight against evolving cyber threats.
Fidelis Network®: Elevating Network Security Standards
If Network Detection and Response is what you are looking for, Fidelis Network®, our ultimate defense solution against cloud and on-premises network threats is the way to go. With unrivaled visibility and control, it safeguards your entire threat framework from start to finish. Discover how it calculates cyber risks in real-time, providing proactive protection against evolving threats.
Frequently Ask Questions
Do I need NDR?
If your organization handles sensitive data or you’re concerned about advanced cyber threats, NDR can enhance your security by detecting and responding to threats within your network.
How Does NDR Differ from Traditional Network Security?
It differs significantly from traditional tools of network security like firewalls and antivirus, which were basically about perimeter defenses. Traditional security tools are largely reactive in nature—they depend upon known signatures and rules to cue off threats. This contrasts with the way NDR solutions have to continuously monitor and analyze the raw network traffic to baseline what is normal; anything that doesn’t fit is likely to be malicious.
NDR uses advanced analytics, including machine learning, based on threat detection capabilities other tools miss—much of which is internal or lateral to the network. This is very key, since most modern attacks now target the internal environment rather than directly breaching perimeter defenses. Modern NDR solutions provide full real-time visibility into every inbound and outbound network activity, thereby increasing the possibility of detecting and responding to threats within an organizational setup. In so doing, these tools become a crucial extension of the conventional security arsenal for an enterprise.
What is the difference between firewall and NDR?
A firewall controls incoming and outgoing network traffic based on predetermined security rules, acting as a barrier.
NDR, however, focuses on monitoring network behavior to detect and respond to threats that might bypass traditional defenses like firewalls.
Is It Possible to Get Help from NDR in the Case of Encrypted Traffic?
Yes, next-generation NDR solutions support the analysis of encrypted traffic without decryption. Nearly 75% of network traffic is encrypted, and much of it goes undetected by traditional methods of threat detection within the traffic. These might involve the out-of-band decryption method and in-depth analytics that can be leveraged by NDR solutions to track effectively encrypted communications. That enables the identification of malicious activities masquerading in these encrypted data streams and sustains the level of visibility and control an organization can retain over its networks in the face of encryption.
