Attivo Networks uses deception technology to tackle cyberthreats

Attivo Networks, a leader in deception for cybersecurity threat detection, has announced new advanced capabilities that use Machine Learning to automatically generate and deploy the most authentic deception that covers an extensive set of attack vectors at scale.

This product release lowers the total cost of ownership by completely automating the deployment and maintenance of the most authentic and comprehensive deception environment. It accomplishes this transparently and without adding any agents to the production environment.

This is a new generation of the ThreatDefend platform that extends a customer’s ability to ubiquitously cover its on premise, remote and cloud operations in a simple and consistent manner. It is the latest in deception technology and completely integrates into any customer’s security workflow.

“To successfully outmanoeuvre attackers, deception solutions need to be dynamic, authentic and enticing to an adversary,” says Ray Kafity, Vice President, Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Attivo Networks. “By leveraging machine learning capabilities, Attivo Networks makes it easier than ever to deploy, manage and operate deception by automating the creation and deployment of decoys and lures. This maintains the credibility of the environment, effectively reducing dwell time and accelerating incident response.”

The overall management of deception boils down to three critical components: automatic deception generation, deployment and maintenance. The original use of honeypots and early forms of deception credential management were either plagued with scalability and management challenges or compromised authenticity for ease of use. Customers no longer need to compromise.

Product enhancements include:

1. Generate deceptions: Machine Learning is utilised to learn the assets, applications and device profiles and automatically generates a matching deception environment. This technology is able to distinguish the difference between IoT devices, SCADA environment and an enterprise network as well as different credential naming conventions
2. Intelligent and agentless deployment: As deception continuously learns the environment, the technology matches network behaviour, mimics devices and deploys deceptive credentials and assets that are mirror-match authentic. Deception campaigns can be automatically deployed and/or can be reviewed and executed at the push of a button
3. The Attivo Networks agentless endpoint credential technology provides an extensive offering of deception breadcrumbs and non-invasive decoys without the need for additional CPU or traditional software infrastructure management. The company’s ThreatDirect deception solution family projects deception at scale throughout the network without the need for additional hardware or infrastructure, making it extremely effective for deploying deception in cloud, remote offices/branch offices, or micro-segmented networks
4. Continuous Operation: Every aspect of the deception environment is monitored to determine when the solution should deploy updates, refresh credentials, and deploy new deception decoys. Additionally, Attivo deception dynamically expands the deception surface upon suspicion of foul play and following any attack, new deception is deployed to automatically refresh the deception environment. This prevents ‘fingerprinting’ by attackers who would then know what to avoid

Ultimately, behavioural deception based upon Machine Learning means that all deception elements can blend seamlessly into the environment and become indistinguishable from production assets; that deceptive environments can continuously evolve and scale; and that attackers cannot defeat the deception by profiling. All, with easy automated management, deployment and operation.

The concept of deception campaigns is not new. However, the ability to do this accurately and at scale without human intervention has evolved and as such, has firmly earned Attivo Networks the business of organisations across all major verticals including the finance, healthcare, retail, energy, legal, travel and entertainment industries. The company grew 300% year over year in 2017 and has secured more than 100 customers across US, EMEA and APAC markets.