Welcome to the Cybersecurity Readiness Podcast Site
Sept. 14, 2022

Detecting Malicious Insider Threats by Monitoring User Journeys

Insider threats are often considered the biggest risk for organizations because they can cause the most destruction. Survey reports, and studies, have found that organizations have spent millions of dollars to recover from insider threat attacks. Proactively detecting and thwarting such threats is a critical aspect of robust information security governance. Doron Hendler, CEO, and Co-Founder at RevealSecurity, sheds light on a context-based detection model that analyzes activity sequences performed when using an application. According to Doron, this User Journey Analytics method is a ubiquitous detection model that can be applied to any SaaS and custom-built application. Since no rules are required, it eliminates the need to fully understand the application business logic.

To access and download the entire podcast summary with discussion highlights --

https://www.dchatte.com/episode-34-detecting-malicious-insider-threats-by-monitoring-user-journeys/

Insider threats are often considered the biggest risk for organizations because they can cause the most destruction. Survey reports, and studies, have found that organizations have spent millions of dollars to recover from insider threat attacks. Proactively detecting and thwarting such threats is a critical aspect of robust information security governance. Doron Hendler, CEO, and Co-Founder at RevealSecurity, sheds light on a context-based detection model that analyzes activity sequences performed when using an application. According to Doron, this User Journey Analytics method is a ubiquitous detection model that can be applied to any SaaS and custom-built application. Since no rules are required, it eliminates the need to fully understand the application business logic.

To access and download the entire podcast summary with discussion highlights --

https://www.dchatte.com/episode-34-detecting-malicious-insider-threats-by-monitoring-user-journeys/

 

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Website: https://dchatte.com/

Cybersecurity Readiness Book: https://www.amazon.com/Cybersecurity-Readiness-Holistic-High-Performance-Approach/dp/1071837338

Transcript

Introducer:

Welcome to the Cybersecurity Readiness Podcast

 

 


Introducer:

series with Dr. Dave Chatterjee. Dr. Chatterjee is the author of

 

 


Introducer:

the book Cybersecurity Readiness: A Holistic and

 

 


Introducer:

High-Performance Approach, a SAGE publication. He has been

 

 


Introducer:

studying cybersecurity for over a decade, authored and edited

 

 


Introducer:

scholarly papers, delivered talks, conducted webinars and

 

 


Introducer:

workshops, consulted with companies and served on a

 

 


Introducer:

cybersecurity SWAT team with Chief Information Security

 

 


Introducer:

officers. Dr. Chatterjee is Associate Professor of

 

 


Introducer:

Management Information Systems at the Terry College of

 

 


Introducer:

Business, the University of Georgia. As a Duke University

 

 


Introducer:

Visiting Scholar, Dr. Chatterjee has taught in the Master of

 

 


Introducer:

Engineering in Cybersecurity program at the Pratt School of

 

 


Introducer:

Engineering.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Hello, everyone, I'm delighted to

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

welcome you to this episode of the Cybersecurity Readiness

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Podcast Series. Our discussion today will revolve around

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

insider threats, and how to proactively detect and thwart

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

this form of malicious attack. I'm indeed fortunate, in fact,

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

we are fortunate to have with us Mr. Doron Hendler, CEO and

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Co-Founder of RevealSecurity. Welcome Doron!

 

 


Doron Hendler:

Hello, welcome. Hi, Dave, thank you for inviting

 

 


Doron Hendler:

me.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Sure, sure. Looking forward to learning a

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

lot from you about your journey. So let's do that first. Let's

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

talk about your professional journey before we get into the

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

details of insider threat, detection challenges, and

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

solutions.

 

 


Doron Hendler:

So I'm in the High Tech for more than 30 years

 

 


Doron Hendler:

doing different types of journeys in different

 

 


Doron Hendler:

industries, different skills. Basically, I've done business

 

 


Doron Hendler:

and traveling from almost Australia to Brazil and did

 

 


Doron Hendler:

businesses across companies, across industries, in different

 

 


Doron Hendler:

geographies. And I was fortunate to get into RevealSecurity

 

 


Doron Hendler:

mainly because, a few years ago, I was a social engineer, then by

 

 


Doron Hendler:

mistake, I was hacked by somebody that called me and by

 

 


Doron Hendler:

mistake, I made a terrible mistake by not notice that

 

 


Doron Hendler:

somebody is social engineering me and I consider myself as a

 

 


Doron Hendler:

sophisticated user. And when I called to this insurance company

 

 


Doron Hendler:

that I realized that I've been hacked, I told them what

 

 


Doron Hendler:

happened. And I asked them to basically close my online portal

 

 


Doron Hendler:

and credentials and reset my credentials. And they did so.

 

 


Doron Hendler:

And when I spoke to the CISO, she was telling me that I don't

 

 


Doron Hendler:

have to be worried. And I asked her why. And she said, because

 

 


Doron Hendler:

it happens to so many different people, even the sophisticated

 

 


Doron Hendler:

one, and I asked her how come you don't have any technology

 

 


Doron Hendler:

solution in place that can detect that somebody is

 

 


Doron Hendler:

basically impersonating and doing malicious activities on my

 

 


Doron Hendler:

behalf on my name. And she said that they do have technology,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

however, it takes them forever to detect and once they detect

 

 


Doron Hendler:

it's already weeks after the incidents, and it's not

 

 


Doron Hendler:

accurate. And it's it's it's a problem. And when I heard that

 

 


Doron Hendler:

this is a problem, I thought to myself, alright, this is an

 

 


Doron Hendler:

opportunity. And this is how we started RevealSecurity. David

 

 


Doron Hendler:

and myself, my co-founder and partner along alongside with

 

 


Doron Hendler:

Adi, who is System Architect.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Fantastic. So that's great that you

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

experienced something which motivated you to address a need.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

And I can't emphasize enough how important it is to develop

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

solutions, whether that involves a specific technology, process,

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

people, whatever that might be, because we could do with all the

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

help that's necessery. I'd like to give the listeners a little

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

bit of a background on insider threats, and then I'll turn it

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

over to you because you are the expert here. So, as our

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

listeners must be aware, insider threats are often considered the

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

biggest risk for organizations because they can cause the most

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

destruction. In fact, survey reports, studies, have found

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

that organizations have had to spend millions of dollars to

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

recover from insider threat attacks. And if you think of

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

some of the well known attacks, probably the GE attack will come

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

to mind, where employees stole trade secrets to gain a business

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

advantage. Then we are also very familiar with the Capital One

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

breach, which happened in 2019, which was carried out by a

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

former software engineer from Amazon Web Services, which was

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

basically the hosting company for Capital One. I also was

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

intrigued to read about a disgruntled employee who was

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

able to gain access to Tesla CEO Elon Musk's privileges to make

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

direct code changes to the Tesla manufacturing operating system

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

under false usernames and exporting large amounts of

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

highly sensitive Tesla data to unknown third parties. So these

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

are very concerning. Doron, would you like to add to the the

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

reason why we are having this discussion?

 

 


Doron Hendler:

So rightfully said Dave, the highest risk in

 

 


Doron Hendler:

today's organizations in our digital transformation is our

 

 


Doron Hendler:

identities. So in many of the cases, we're moving from known

 

 


Doron Hendler:

people that work in the office on a day to day basis, to

 

 


Doron Hendler:

identity, digital identities, this is a digital world. And the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

ability to actually understand who does what in our corporate

 

 


Doron Hendler:

business application is one of the major challenges in today's

 

 


Doron Hendler:

world. Because once you move to the cloud, once you move to SAS,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

it's it's all about you and the application and what you do. If

 

 


Doron Hendler:

you connect more applications from a marketplace, then

 

 


Doron Hendler:

basically you enrich the connectivity and data and flows

 

 


Doron Hendler:

and activities between applications, and the one that

 

 


Doron Hendler:

knows all of our all of our secrets, and all of our

 

 


Doron Hendler:

solutions that basically should protect ourselves, are the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

people that have the privileges and the ones that that actually

 

 


Doron Hendler:

knows, and protect us, I like to give this analogy for the guard

 

 


Doron Hendler:

that basically sits and in the entrance of many offices, this

 

 


Doron Hendler:

guard knows about all the alarm systems, and all the checkups,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

and all the procedures in order to do this monitoring. But what

 

 


Doron Hendler:

happens if we cannot trust this guard? What happens if this

 

 


Doron Hendler:

guard is doing malicious activity? How would you if you

 

 


Doron Hendler:

cannot trust this guy? And at the end, people say, okay, but

 

 


Doron Hendler:

are you monitoring your internal employees? Are you monitoring

 

 


Doron Hendler:

your partners? So now I'm trusting my systems to basically

 

 


Doron Hendler:

monitor privileged accounts and accounts and actions. And I'm

 

 


Doron Hendler:

looking for anomalies because I want to protect the company, I

 

 


Doron Hendler:

want to protect our business, collectively, me as a security

 

 


Doron Hendler:

officer or, or as an executive. And one of the challenges is if

 

 


Doron Hendler:

you cannot trust no one, and you have to monitor and you have to

 

 


Doron Hendler:

track and you have to learn how do you do this quickly,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

accurately and automatically.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

True, very true. And you mentioned trust,

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

and hope you will agree that we are moving in the direction of

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Zero Trust, that yes, we should be trusting people who are

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

working for an organization who are loyal to the organization or

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

holding responsible positions. But there is enough evidence to

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

suggest that things happen in people's lives, people get

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

fired, people have tough economics times, which often

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

serve as a motivator to engage in disruptive acts. So

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

therefore, it is imperative that organizations arm themselves for

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

lack of a better word with the best possible solution,

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

technology solution, which will do the work for them, whereby

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

everybody is being monitored. So there is no discrimination of

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

any sorts, where technology is being used to monitor, carefully

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

monitor. So, Doron, going back to monitoring using technology,

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

share with the listeners, what was the traditional method, what

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

were some of the weaknesses of the traditional method, and what

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

you and your company are offering by wave of your

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

platform.

 

 


Doron Hendler:

So today's detection technology,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

predominantly, in the application space, I would say

 

 


Doron Hendler:

based on rules. Now rules are were set and developed mainly

 

 


Doron Hendler:

around patterns and scenarios, which have been identified, that

 

 


Doron Hendler:

been identified by the corporate in the business as things that

 

 


Doron Hendler:

you should not do or users should not do. So there were

 

 


Doron Hendler:

listing all the things that people should not do. And if

 

 


Doron Hendler:

they are doing this, the rule will flag it. The challenge with

 

 


Doron Hendler:

this is that there is a limit to what we as human beings can

 

 


Doron Hendler:

think of, of what potential scenarios may happen because

 

 


Doron Hendler:

there is a limit, and you may skip some, one, few. And also

 

 


Doron Hendler:

this approach of us thinking of what potentially may happen, is

 

 


Doron Hendler:

not scalable across so many different applications? And

 

 


Doron Hendler:

today, in our digital world, where applications are a click

 

 


Doron Hendler:

away and you can adapt new system, new CRM, new SAP, a new

 

 


Doron Hendler:

ERP system and so forth, many of the applications are only a

 

 


Doron Hendler:

click away. How can you imagine that you will know the business

 

 


Doron Hendler:

logic and the patterns of what can be done or what should not

 

 


Doron Hendler:

be done across so many different applications. So the current

 

 


Doron Hendler:

solution, today's solution around detections, which are

 

 


Doron Hendler:

based on rules, basically provide very, very limited,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

ineffective detection, in the application layer. Also, it's

 

 


Doron Hendler:

not accurate, which means it generates very high number of

 

 


Doron Hendler:

false positives. So you need much more, many more people to

 

 


Doron Hendler:

go through this alerts to understand if these things

 

 


Doron Hendler:

really happened. So you have to separate and identify the false

 

 


Doron Hendler:

positive and, and the real incidents. So the industry have

 

 


Doron Hendler:

moved into a much more accurate detection, which is based on

 

 


Doron Hendler:

context. Just to give you an example, one of the first

 

 


Doron Hendler:

companies that was thinking in moving into a sequence in

 

 


Doron Hendler:

context was Cisco, when they introduced NetFlow. NetFlow was

 

 


Doron Hendler:

one of the first product in the market that Cisco introduced,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

that was actually doing the shift from analyzing single

 

 


Doron Hendler:

activity single packet into a sequence of packets. Why,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

because Cisco was saying accuracy comes with context, if

 

 


Doron Hendler:

you will understand the context, you will have much better

 

 


Doron Hendler:

accuracy. The same things happens also, with end-points.

 

 


Doron Hendler:

Detection started with antiviruses, and slowly moved

 

 


Doron Hendler:

into EDR, extended detection response, looking into

 

 


Doron Hendler:

processes, into flows. So we at RevealSecurity was following

 

 


Doron Hendler:

that trends and developing what we call user journey analytics

 

 


Doron Hendler:

in the application. So we actually monitoring the journeys

 

 


Doron Hendler:

in the activity, the sequences of who does what in the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

applications and using or developed based on our very

 

 


Doron Hendler:

unique machine learning unsupervised clustering engine,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

we are able to differentiate and learn per user multiple behavior

 

 


Doron Hendler:

profiles, it's normal behavior profiles. And if something

 

 


Doron Hendler:

different happens, we can flag it and say, hey, there is

 

 


Doron Hendler:

something different here from your normal activities. And then

 

 


Doron Hendler:

you can investigate quickly and accurately why what was the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

reason for that? So moving from all traditional context into

 

 


Doron Hendler:

journeys, context, user journeys analytics, it's actually brings

 

 


Doron Hendler:

a totally new dimension of very accurate detections or reducing

 

 


Doron Hendler:

the signal to noise ratio, as we like to say, automatically and

 

 


Doron Hendler:

quickly. And that's, that's the name of the game around

 

 


Doron Hendler:

detection. And that's what is needed today.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Very interesting. So essentially, if

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

I could summarize what you said, that there is a clear move from

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

user behavior analytics to user journey analytics. Rule based

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

solutions, don't work, statistical analysis to augment

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

rule based solutions are also found to be not very effective.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Very interesting. So given this move to these more advanced,

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

more sophisticated solutions, for folks who are listening in

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

on this conversation, CISOs of companies who have the authority

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

to make purchasing decisions. How do they go about evaluating

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

the different products out there? What should they be

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

looking for, in terms of what would work best for their

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

context for their environment? Any advice? Any suggestions,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

The best advice I can give your listeners is they

 

 


Doron Hendler:

have to try it. So analytics and machine learning, it's a lot of

 

 


Doron Hendler:

trial and errors. It's a lot of mathematics, it doesn't work on

 

 


Doron Hendler:

every scenario on every applications. And my

 

 


Doron Hendler:

recommendation and my advice is that you should be able to try.

 

 


Doron Hendler:

Once you try this, some of the success criteria can be the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

number of false positives, number of false negatives, how

 

 


Doron Hendler:

accurate, how easy it is to investigate, can it be applied

 

 


Doron Hendler:

to any application or specific application, can it be applied

 

 


Doron Hendler:

to situations that you have between applications, for

 

 


Doron Hendler:

example, today, you have identity providers, like Single

 

 


Doron Hendler:

Sign On providers and then you move to another applications how

 

 


Doron Hendler:

you can call it all of the sequences between the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

application, how do you how do you analyze all of this journey?

 

 


Doron Hendler:

So, trying, understanding, and analyzing the results are my my

 

 


Doron Hendler:

advice to many of the listener, that they need to try this they

 

 


Doron Hendler:

need to see actually how system is working and then come to the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

conclusion what works for them best.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Very good, very good! Now, you mentioned

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

about use of machine learning to analyze to monitor analyze user

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

journeys. Now, we all know that even machine learning is an

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

evolving technology and the effectiveness of machine

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

learning techniques and outcomes depends on gathering good

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

quality data. So there are there are challenges with the machine

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

learning approach. So given that, just like you said, the

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

user behavior analytics approach has shortcomings, what could be

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

possible shortcomings of the user journey analytics approach.

 

 


Doron Hendler:

So the user journey analytics in the end,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

it's very much relies on the fact that you have a journey.

 

 


Doron Hendler:

Sometimes in some applications, for example, transferring money,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

if you transfer from money from point A to point B, there is no

 

 


Doron Hendler:

journey, there is no process. Then you need to apply a

 

 


Doron Hendler:

different modeling, a supervised modeling, like what like in the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

industry. So user journey analytics, it's applicable to

 

 


Doron Hendler:

application that has process, that there are different

 

 


Doron Hendler:

options. So the user has different journeys in different

 

 


Doron Hendler:

application, even if for the same application, you can, you

 

 


Doron Hendler:

may do different things in different ways. And if it's

 

 


Doron Hendler:

based that the user has a variety of options to do

 

 


Doron Hendler:

different things. So user journey analytics is applicable

 

 


Doron Hendler:

for cases and use cases where there are processes. Once you

 

 


Doron Hendler:

have a process, it means that you have a sequence, sequence of

 

 


Doron Hendler:

activities, sequence of activity represent a journey. And this is

 

 


Doron Hendler:

something that with the right machine learning and clustering

 

 


Doron Hendler:

that is able to cluster based on similarity, similar sessions,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

then technology like this can be very, very effective. It has its

 

 


Doron Hendler:

own challenges, because clustering needs data to be

 

 


Doron Hendler:

accurate. And this is exactly one of the challenges in the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

industry. Not all the clusters or the unsupervised clustering

 

 


Doron Hendler:

engine are good for such scenarios. So my recommendation

 

 


Doron Hendler:

is to find the company that really developed a dedicated

 

 


Doron Hendler:

custom built dedicated clustering engine for security

 

 


Doron Hendler:

purposes. And not using off-the-shelf or open source

 

 


Doron Hendler:

solutions, as opposed to developing a dedicated

 

 


Doron Hendler:

mathematical clustering engine that is able to cluster a high

 

 


Doron Hendler:

number of data points or sequences accurately,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

automatically, with zero configuration, that itself all

 

 


Doron Hendler:

this profile by itself, self learning, and continuously

 

 


Doron Hendler:

updating the profiles or creating new profiles as data

 

 


Doron Hendler:

comes in. And that's the important, build an accurate

 

 


Doron Hendler:

automatic machines that can save you money, time and effort.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Right, right. So another question that

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

comes to mind. When organizations adopt a new

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

technology, a new technology platform, it's not if one can

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

assume that, yeah, I've adopted it, I'm going to see results,

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

the organization also has to be prepared has to make certain

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

adjustments to the way they operate, whether it's from a

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

process context, from a people context, or from the existing

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

technologies, how they interface with the new technology

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

platform. So the organization has to make some adjustments. So

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

if if a company was going to adopt this technology platform

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

this, which provides these user journey analytics, what kind of

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

changes does it require? Like from a change management

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

standpoint, what should an organization be prepared for?

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Does that make sense?

 

 


Doron Hendler:

I have to say this Dave, my recommendation is

 

 


Doron Hendler:

that technology will adapt itself for the organization,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

because the probability that the organization will change for

 

 


Doron Hendler:

specific technology is slim. So one of the requirements is that

 

 


Doron Hendler:

this technology will offer a solution which are friction,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

frictionless, that doesn't require major changes or any

 

 


Doron Hendler:

changes. So, to my point of view, that's that's my

 

 


Doron Hendler:

recommendation. Because expecting a very large

 

 


Doron Hendler:

enterprise, I don't know with the 5000, 10,000 and sometime

 

 


Doron Hendler:

50,000 people organization, to change in order to implement the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

chances that this project will be successfully are very slim.

 

 


Doron Hendler:

Therefore, if you adopt such a technology, the technology needs

 

 


Doron Hendler:

to be designed in a way that it will not interrupt with the day

 

 


Doron Hendler:

to day processes and will be adopted to observe them as they

 

 


Doron Hendler:

are and come up with the insights automatically and

 

 


Doron Hendler:

accurately.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Okay, that's good to know. So

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

essentially, what you're saying is, the adoption and

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

implementation of such a platform should be fairly

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

smooth, should not should not interrupt existing operations.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Well, that's, that's very good to know. Another aspect when

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

there is a detection of anomalous behavior, when the

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

user journey is different from the normal user journey, let's

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

say abnormal user journeys are detected. How does the alert

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

system work? Who is alerted? And is there a way of capturing or

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

documenting whether organizations are responding to

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

those alerts

 

 


Doron Hendler:

When a sequence is being detected, there's an

 

 


Doron Hendler:

anomaly, an alert is being sent to the SOC (Security Operations

 

 


Doron Hendler:

Center) and being investigated by the analyst. Right. And then

 

 


Doron Hendler:

they have to, they can follow a procedure. For example, if this

 

 


Doron Hendler:

is a very high risk in a very high sensitive, sensitive

 

 


Doron Hendler:

application, the procedure may be in a way that you basically

 

 


Doron Hendler:

trigger another OTP (One-Time-Password) to the user.

 

 


Doron Hendler:

And that's maybe something that the user need to confirm that he

 

 


Doron Hendler:

is the user. And that he owns the device, because he's making

 

 


Doron Hendler:

a sequence which is very sensitive, relates to

 

 


Doron Hendler:

potentially money transfer. And because of that, you may decide

 

 


Doron Hendler:

that the procedure will be sending another OTP, or a text

 

 


Doron Hendler:

or something else. So there are different ways to do this. Now,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

if you want to basically investigate, so you can, you can

 

 


Doron Hendler:

also integrate into SOAR (security orchestration,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

automation and response) system and suspend the user, hold the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

users, quarantine the user not approving the transaction. So

 

 


Doron Hendler:

there are many, many, many different ways that you need to

 

 


Doron Hendler:

investigate and the classical way, the simplest way that I see

 

 


Doron Hendler:

we see many organization in a way that you basically contact

 

 


Doron Hendler:

this individual. And you ask him, why have you done this or

 

 


Doron Hendler:

whether you have done this this sequence. And in many of the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

cases, I have to say that internal consultants outsourcing

 

 


Doron Hendler:

and then internal employees are also trying the system, they're

 

 


Doron Hendler:

trying to see if there is some something or someone or some

 

 


Doron Hendler:

technology that actually monitoring their behavior. So I

 

 


Doron Hendler:

like to say also on going back to the guard at the entrance,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

when you come in the morning, you see the guard, you tell the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

guard, good morning, you trust him, he protect you, he is

 

 


Doron Hendler:

monitoring who comes in and out. Also me as an employee, I trust

 

 


Doron Hendler:

my security, infrastructure, security technology, that it

 

 


Doron Hendler:

will protect me and make sure that I'm not going to be abused.

 

 


Doron Hendler:

So nobody will steal my credentials. Or if somebody will

 

 


Doron Hendler:

do a malicious activity that will hurt the organization, it

 

 


Doron Hendler:

will be detected. So this is some of the thoughts that I have

 

 


Doron Hendler:

on this point.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Yeah, makes sense. And just since he used a

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

couple of acronyms, SOC stands for security operations center,

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

and OTP stands for One-Time-Password. And if

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

there's anything else that comes up, we'll clarify as we go

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

along. But yeah, that makes a lot of sense. In fact, the

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

reason I asked that question Doron, in my work, when I do

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

research, when I consult with companies, I often come across

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

instances where their processes for quickly reacting to the

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

threat alerts and doing the due diligence is often slack, is

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

often sloppy. That's why I posed the question, but I totally

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

understand from where you're coming. Another kind of a

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

reaction to what you were saying is, in the world of security,

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

the perspective on security varies from organization to

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

organization. Some organizations are more skeptical than others,

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

when it comes to trying new solutions, because they feel

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Yeah, we will spend money, we are not sure we will see the

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

ROI. So when you are talking about a solution like this,

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

which has a lot of promises a lot of potential, how do you

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

convince a potential buyer or potential customer to give it a

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

shot? What does it take? What have you experienced when you

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

have engaged with prospective customers? What are their

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

concerns when they're evaluating such platforms?

 

 


Doron Hendler:

So one of the main concern is the variety of

 

 


Doron Hendler:

new applications and legacy applications that security

 

 


Doron Hendler:

executives needs to protect and write basically, business rules.

 

 


Doron Hendler:

And, and they don't have the capability, the manpower, the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

time to develop these across so many different applications. And

 

 


Doron Hendler:

every other week, or day or month, you have more and more

 

 


Doron Hendler:

applications, SaaS applications coming in, then you collect all

 

 


Doron Hendler:

the logs and into a central repository, and you need to do

 

 


Doron Hendler:

something with it. All right, rather than just collecting the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

logs. So for us, it's not convincing. This is a need and

 

 


Doron Hendler:

need by many of the security executives to come up with a

 

 


Doron Hendler:

much more effective way accurate and cost saving in monitoring

 

 


Doron Hendler:

the application layer, which is kind of there, but the need is

 

 


Doron Hendler:

there. But the technology is not there yet. And we don't need to

 

 


Doron Hendler:

convince them because they require something like this,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

which today, they have to spend a lot of time and effort and

 

 


Doron Hendler:

sometimes people even when we discuss with them maybe about

 

 


Doron Hendler:

budgets and space holders they saying in responding to us, we

 

 


Doron Hendler:

don't need to put a space holder for you guys. And I ask why?

 

 


Doron Hendler:

Because the cost saving you giving us on professional

 

 


Doron Hendler:

services that we need to hire third party companies to write

 

 


Doron Hendler:

all these rules to advise us how to write the rules and patterns,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

etc. The cost saving is already two or three times higher than

 

 


Doron Hendler:

the cost of your system. So it's a no brainer in many of the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

cases.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Okay, excellent. I want to reiterate

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

something you just said -- collecting the logs is not good

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

enough, you have to do something with the logs. So true! Promptly

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

analyzing the security logs, and taking the necessary action is

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

centric to maintaining a proactive security posture. So

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Doran, we are coming to the end of our discussion today. I wish

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

we had more time. But anyhow, I'd like to give you the

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

opportunity to wrap it up for us with some final thoughts and

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

advice.

 

 


Doron Hendler:

So when you're looking in into the future, in

 

 


Doron Hendler:

the next few years, you will see more and more basically, that

 

 


Doron Hendler:

the identities are becoming digital, there are no networks,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

because it's all about identity access into the applications.

 

 


Doron Hendler:

There are lots of different technology around access, around

 

 


Doron Hendler:

identity and access management, but very few around detection of

 

 


Doron Hendler:

applications. And at the end, what makes your business

 

 


Doron Hendler:

successful are the people and the applications, the rest are

 

 


Doron Hendler:

facilitators to make you successful. And if you really

 

 


Doron Hendler:

want to be protected in making sure that you are fully covered,

 

 


Doron Hendler:

there is a need for an application detection and

 

 


Doron Hendler:

response solution layer, which is required today by many of the

 

 


Doron Hendler:

organization and can provide you the bulletproof for the future.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Fabulous. Well, Doron, thank you so much

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

for your time for your insights. I'm sure listeners greatly

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

appreciate it. Thank you.

 

 


Doron Hendler:

Thank you very much, Dave for hosting me today.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

A special thanks to Doron Hendler for his

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

time and insights. If you like what you heard, please leave the

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

podcast a rating and share it with your network. Also,

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

subscribe to the show, so you don't miss any new episodes.

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

Thank you for listening, and I'll see you in the next

 

 


Dr. Dave Chatterjee:

episode.

 

 


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