NDR for Cloud Workloads and Asset Discovery

The modern workspace has evolved over the last few years, with more and more companies embracing a hybrid work model. The limitations of on-premises hardware have created demand for new IT solutions that allow industries everywhere to focus on performance and innovation without slowing them down.

As companies have shifted toward a hybrid working model, they have turned to cloud services to support employees working from multiple locations. However, moving to the cloud increases organizations’ attack surface, and a migration often creates the need for a new security model.

Securing the network is the first step toward achieving a better defense. The next step is for organizations to work their way outward, making sure they have insight into everything that communicates with the network. The more devices and endpoints an organization has, the broader its attack surface. Even a single unmanaged device can cause immense damage, as we’ve seen in the REvil ransomware attack on Kaseya. To eliminate blind spots, security teams need to broaden their field of vision, and a strong network detection and response (NDR) tool can provide complete visibility across hybrid and multicloud environments.

There are two capabilities an NDR solution should have to protect applications, data and resources wherever they reside: cloud-scale machine learning (ML) and complete asset inventory functionality. These features can reduce the friction involved with migrating to the cloud and offer peace of mind so your organization can grow with confidence.

Cloud-Scale Machine Learning

One factor that can hinder cloud migration is friction, specifically, friction between members of the leadership team, who want to achieve the same goal but have opposing methods. While the CISO wants it done securely, the CIO wants it done quickly. Cloud-scale ML can help organizations achieve both outcomes: security and speed. NDR solutions that host ML workloads in the cloud allow companies to harness the near limitless resources available, and they’ll be able to analyze data across their hybrid and multicloud environments.

With complete security coverage in the network and beyond, security teams will be able to take advantage of automatic firmware updates. Continuous cloud ML deployments allow analysts to focus on proactively and efficiently scaling up instead of having to manually push out new updates. Innovation can’t happen when your team is dealing with menial, yet necessary, tasks all day. With the flexibility to automatically handle certain aspects of the migration process, both security and performance teams can focus on delivering better results.

Complete Asset Discovery

A growing attack surface means more gaps in security that need to be filled. With a growing remote workforce at many companies, unmanaged devices—which can include the internet of things (IoT), employee personal devices, or shadow IT—can be difficult to track down. Unmanaged devices have even been called out as a key challenge in the upcoming CISA Binding Operational Directive 23-01, which will require agencies on federal networks to perform weekly, automated asset discovery. Even though its directive is aimed specifically at the federal level, every organization can and should know who and what is communicating with its network.

The good news is that if you can see everything on your network, you should be able to see everything connected to it. The most valuable NDR solutions offer complete asset discovery so security teams don’t have to stress about a growing list of unmanaged devices. They’ll also be able to use ML-powered alerts so IT analysts can see anomalous behavior and accurately flag it when a device is acting up.

Improving Your Overall Security Posture

Migrating more applications, data and workloads to the cloud while maintaining a strong security posture is possible with the right NDR solution. NDR offers the fullest breadth of network data and visibility to complement endpoint detection and response (EDR) and security information and event management (SIEM) tools. Best-of-breed NDR helps security teams automate many detection and investigation tasks while giving them a clearer picture of what’s on the network.

A strong security posture starts from the inside out. If you don’t know what’s going on in your network, an NDR solution with cloud-hosted ML and complete asset inventory capabilities can help you figure it out.