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Navigating Insider Threat Solutions: The Case for a Unified Insider Threat Platform

by Blog Archives - Gurucul on July 2, 2024

Insider threats pose a significant and growing risk to organizations, necessitating strong solutions to detect, investigate, build cases and respond to such risks. Standalone solutions like User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA), Privileged Access Management (PAM), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) have traditionally been piecemealed to address specific aspects of insider threats.

However, managing multiple disparate insider threat tools can be complex and resource-intensive. For instance, anomaly detection in a single solution lacks sufficient context and often results in false positives that insider threat analysts waste cycles on. Furthermore, the investigation of such anomalies is cumbersome as data and insights reside in siloes—resulting in wasted precious resources.

Gurucul offers a unified insider threat solution that combines UEBA, Identity and Access Analytics, behavioral DLP, NTA and telemetry from business applications, providing organizations with a unified approach to insider threat management. In this article, we’ll explore the challenges posed by standalone solutions and how Gurucul’s integrated approach can streamline insider threat detection, case management and response.

Challenges with Standalone Insider Threat Solutions:

Managing multiple standalone insider threat solutions can present several challenges for organizations:

1. Siloed Data and Analysis:

Each standalone insider threat solution operates independently, leading to siloed data and analysis. This fragmentation can hinder the ability to correlate and contextualize information, resulting in unsubstantiated false positives—or worse, with missed or delayed detection of insider threats.

2. Complex Integration and Management:

Integrating and managing multiple insider threat solutions requires significant time, resources, and expertise. Organizations may struggle to maintain interoperability between disparate tools, leading to inefficiencies and gaps in coverage. This is especially true when considering unconventional HR systems containing valuable employee sentiment data that can contribute to inefficiencies and gaps in coverage.

3. Cumbersome Case Creation and Management:

The ability to effectively collaborate with HR and Legal is a unique and critical component to any insider threat program. Standalone insider threat solutions make collaboration difficult throughout the entire case creation and management lifecycle. Weak cases lacking adequate context deteriorate trust with those business units and potentially infringe on privacy laws. Meanwhile, the ability to create complete cases is extremely time consuming, reducing the chances of preventing insider risk before exfiltration occurs.

4. Limited Response Capabilities:

Standalone insider threat solutions often lack comprehensive response capabilities, particularly in the areas of privileged access management and endpoint detection and response. This limitation can impede the organization’s ability to swiftly mitigate insider threats and contain potential breaches.

5. Reactive Rather Than Predictive:

In the case of Data Loss Prevention tools, these solutions rely on predefined policies aligned to the organizations understanding of only known threats. With limited visibility into pre-egress events, DLP only inspects data at the point of egress which means they miss important indicators of insider threats that could be leveraged proactively to limit privileges and prevent exfiltration from occurring to begin with.

The Gurucul Insider Threat Solution Advantage

Gurucul offers a unified insider threat solution that combines UEBA, Identity Analytics, behavioral DLP and NTA functionalities, empowering organizations to proactively detect and respond to insider threats in real-time. Through this approach, Gurucul consolidates data from diverse sources such as user or entity activity logs, network traffic, endpoint telemetry, security and IT ops data, as well as less conventional business and HR application data. This unified data pool offers a comprehensive perspective on insider threat activity, enabling Gurucul to detect anomalies and true risks effectively.

By correlating and analyzing this amalgamated data in real time, Gurucul identifies subtle behavioral patterns that when contextualized by surrounding data help predict real insider risk before an incident occurs. This proactive stance empowers organizations to swiftly respond to potential security incidents and mitigate risks before they escalate, fortifying defenses against insider threats in today’s dynamic cybersecurity landscape.

Here’s how the Gurucul insider threat solution addresses the limitations of standalone tools:

1. Unified Data Analysis:

Gurucul employs advanced analytics techniques to analyze data from various sources in real time to mitigate insider threats effectively in one solution. Here’s how Gurucul accomplishes this:

Data Aggregation: Gurucul aggregates data from disparate sources, including network traffic, security logs, access privileges, endpoint telemetry, user activity logs, and application logs, into a centralized repository. This unified data pool forms the foundation for comprehensive threat analysis.
Correlation and Contextualization: Gurucul correlates data points across different sources to establish contextual relationships and identify patterns of behavior that may indicate insider threats. By analyzing the interactions between users, devices, applications, and data, Gurucul gains a nuanced understanding of normal and abnormal behavior.
Behavioral Analytics: Gurucul utilizes advanced behavioral analytics techniques, such as AI and machine learning and anomaly detection algorithms, to analyze the aggregated data in real-time. By establishing baseline behavior profiles for users and entities, Gurucul can detect deviations from normal patterns and flag potentially suspicious activities indicative of insider threats.
Risk Scoring and Prioritization: Gurucul assigns normalized risk scores from 1-100 to user activities based on the severity and likelihood of insider threats. By prioritizing high-risk events for investigation and response, Gurucul helps security teams focus their efforts on mitigating the most significant threats first.
Automated Response and Remediation: Gurucul’s platform includes a security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) module to automate response and remediation actions to address insider threats in real-time, or supports bi-directional integration with third-party SOAR solutions. The platform’s SOAR module can be used to automatically quarantine compromised endpoints, revoke privileged access, or initiate other response actions to contain and mitigate threats.

2. Seamless Integration and Orchestration:

Gurucul integrates seamlessly with existing PAM and EDR solutions, enabling organizations to leverage their investments in these technologies. Through its Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) capabilities, Gurucul automates incident response workflows, allowing for swift remediation of insider threats. Gurucul utilizes information from Privileged Access Management (PAM) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) systems to facilitate our response efforts. This involves activating and executing predefined response playbooks, which can include actions such as enabling verbose logging for the individual in question and instructing the EDR to scan or quarantine their device. Seamless bi-directional coordination between these tools is crucial for efficient incident response.

3. Comprehensive Response Capabilities:

With the Gurucul insider threat management solution, organizations gain access to a wide range of response actions, including user access management and endpoint remediation. By leveraging its integration with identity management and Zero Trust tools, Gurucul enables organizations to enforce least privilege access policies and revoke access rights in real-time, mitigating the impact of insider threats. Gurucul employs a comprehensive arsenal of tools, including User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA), data science, machine learning, and identity and access analytics, to combat insider threats. Through these technologies, Gurucul gains insights into user provisioning processes and identifies the privileged entitlements held by individuals. This holistic approach equips us to efficiently detect and manage security incidents while harnessing the full potential of our platform.

Conclusion:

Organizations must adopt a proactive approach to insider threat management. While standalone solutions like UEBA, PAM, EDR, DLP, and NTA, address specific aspects of insider threats, they often lack interoperability and comprehensive response capabilities. Gurucul offers a unified insider threat solution that combines functionalities, providing organizations with a holistic approach to insider threat detection and response. It can communicate and respond with PAM and EDR and provide remediation plays. By streamlining data analysis, integration, and response orchestration, Gurucul empowers organizations to effectively mitigate insider threats and safeguard their sensitive data and assets.