As cybersecurity threats continue to grow in complexity and frequency, achieving operational excellence in threat detection and response is more important than ever. However, SOCs (Security Operation Centers) often face a variety of operational challenges that can hinder their ability to effectively protect their organizations. From alert fatigue to manual investigation and lack of visibility, these challenges can waste valuable time and resources and put the organization at risk. In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the common operational challenges that cybersecurity professionals face and explain how an osquery-based endpoint monitoring solution can help overcome these challenges and improve operational excellence.

Streamlining SOC Processes with a Powerful Tool

As cybersecurity practitioners, you operate in a rapidly evolving landscape whilst dealing with security incidents sprouting from an ever-expanding sea of locations. Having a solid base of well-drilled operational processes and stable technologies is an absolute necessity to allow you to focus on fighting the good fight. Being able to provide this level of base operation capabilities is an accomplishment in itself, but it only serves you to maintain the status quo, rather than tipping it in your favor. Whilst there are many items that can lift your operational levels higher step by step, there are few that allow you to take strides of several steps in one go. One of these items is osquery.

For those unfamiliar, osquery is an open-source tool that enables security teams to extract and monitor endpoint device state information in real time, providing enhanced visibility and threat detection capabilities across multiple operating systems.

Through the use of osquery, SOCs can gain deeper insights into endpoint device activities and the overall security posture of their organization. Combined with a centralized management server, such as EclecticIQ’s Endpoint Response, security teams can simplify their monitoring processes and reduce the complexity of managing multiple agents across multiple operating systems.

This multi-agent complexity results in a reduction of your operational efficiency due to the overhead of maintaining multiple agents and their platforms, but also due to the multiple data formats that are introduced in logs sent by the agents to your SIEM or XDR platform. Multiple agents and technologies each require their own training regime, leading to additional debt in maintaining a well-trained operating team, as well as longer onboarding for new team members.

Osquery also helps to reduce the broad technology skillset required of cybersecurity practitioners when it comes to query languages. Many tools, especially those aimed at enterprise-level clients, implement their own query languages or syntax when using their products. Whilst this is aimed at making the best use of those products and making cross-pollination of products by the same vendor more appealing, it overlooks the training requirements placed on actual operators of these products. Any amount of additional training takes an operator away from their day-to-day responsibilities, meaning that operational levels drop whilst training is undertaken.

Enhanced Productivity with SQL

Osquery uses SQL for querying, as SQL is one of the most common query languages in use today it is highly likely that team members (existing and new) have had at least some level of exposure to using SQL. Given the popularity of SQL there are countless free online resources for teams and team members to leverage if the need arises, this certainly beats having to spend time and money attending a vendor-specific training lesson to learn their proprietary query language.

As with SQL, osquery itself is a thriving ecosystem driven by the community, also resulting in a large volume of online resources to help organizations and practitioners accomplish their use cases. With community, or even vendor-created queries and query packs for monitoring and threat hunting available for free, you can expand your capabilities and implement cutting-edge detection logic without having to invest vast amounts of in-house time and effort.

Take Osquery to the Next Level with EclecticIQ Endpoint Response

Osquery is available for anyone to use but its real power comes when combined with a dedicated management server, such as EclecticIQ’s Endpoint Response. This abstracts the need to configure agents individually and allows you to finely tune agent configuration as you require. From OS-based default configuration, tag-based query packs, and Windows Defender integration, you can make headway on your journey to operational excellence whilst improving your visibility and response capabilities. EclecticIQ’s Endpoint Response implements a live response feature where operators can implement real-time changes to the endpoint, or endpoints, all using the same single agent.

The strive for operational excellence is an unending one and it requires one to work smarter rather than harder, which is often more difficult than you expect, especially with a higher number of stakeholders or decision-makers. Organizations should take stock of their current and desired operating states and explore which process changes or technologies can make real and wholesale improvements to several operating areas rather than a single area, as these single-area improvements will usually come with additional complications and overheads that aren’t immediately obvious.

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About Endpoint Security Solution Assessment

The assessment should cover all aspects of our traditional People, Process, and Technology Framework. Check out the whitepaper on “5 Questions to Ask About Your EDR” to help you make an informed decision.

About EclecticIQ Endpoint Response

EclecticIQ Endpoint Response solution offers unapparelled visibility into endpoint telemetry – by using the proven open-source telemetry tool osquery as a foundation and adding our own custom extensions on top, achieving in a single agent what would otherwise require multiple tools running in unison. Interested to learn more, feel free to contact us.

About EclecticIQ Endpoint Response Community Edition

The EclecticIQ Community Edition platform is a sophisticated and flexible endpoint monitoring and response platform, based on the osquery agent. It provides endpoint monitoring and visibility, threat detection, and incident response for Security Operating Centers (SOCs). Download it on Github.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from EclecticIQ Blog authored by EclecticIQ Endpoint Security Team. Read the original post at: https://blog.eclecticiq.com/achieving-operational-excellence-in-a-cybersecurity-program