Deception & Counterintelligence

Deception is a foundational tool in any security strategy. Even the best-prepared, most mature team will not be ready for every eventuality. The goal for security leadership at organizations of any size should be improving cyber resilience and keeping systems operational.

Detecting threats is vital, but on its own it is not enough. Detection and prevention need to be fused together in order to deliver operational resilience. The key is not to spend the security budget entirely on detection but to be able to make "intelligent business-driven decisions". The challenge for security leaders is how to get to the point whereby they are empowered to make those types of decisions.

Deception can bring businesses of varying levels of maturity to a place where they have real, timely information to help them make informed decisions. Deception technology offers early insight into attacks by alerting security teams of threat actors, sometimes before they even penetrate the network.

Deception also helps to weed out false positives, meaning it can actually save a smaller SOC team critical resources. They now are able to devote their time to alerts that actually need attention.

How mature should a business be?

Deception serves different functions depending on a business’s maturity level.
In the Gartner Hype Cycle Report it is made clear that organizations of all security maturity should be examining the value that deception can bring them - allowing them to fuse prevention and detection into a fully strategic security operations model.

Most organizations’ stance on cyber deception stems from the belief that only mature businesses can incorporate deception into their current cybersecurity strategy. This is a common misconception that keeps many organizations from making the most out of a strategic proactive approach against their adversaries.

Incorporating cyber deception into your strategy is not about maturity - it‘s about wanting to make intelligent business-driven decisions.

Gartner defines these as decisions that allow organizations to detect attack vectors well before they get anywhere near their networks. In their thought-provoking Hype Cycle for Security Operations report, Gartner shows not only where cyber deception stands in the hype cycle, but also how the level of maturity in any organization’s security operations may not be relevant to the central question: Am I ready for cyber deception?

Deception technology seems to be oriented towards high-maturity organizations, but the truth is it can offer security benefits to almost any size of company. Nowadays, even small or local businesses are targeted by threat actors. Even worse, these businesses are often less prepared and have fewer resources when it comes to network security.

The truth is, anyone looking for early detection, faster MTTR, and fewer false positives can benefit from deception. Even smaller companies can use deception to keep networks up during an attack, improve security posture, and quickly detect attacks.

In fact, deception can often be ideal for smaller companies. Many campaigns and tools don’t require any additional investment and some are even run by a third party. This allows a tiny to non-existent security team to put up a defense that gives them a chance against motivated attackers.

Deception, in summary, can be applied in different, creative ways according to an organization’s size, goals, and resources. That makes it a great option for larger organizations as well as small businesses that need to have an agile response to any potential attacks.

iSOC24 carries the CounterCraft deception technology in its portfolio. CounterCraft is the next generation of threat intelligence. The CounterCraft Cyber Deception Platform offers active defense powered by high-interaction deception technology. Countercraft detects threats early, collects personalized, actionable intelligence, and enables organizations to defend their valuable data in real time. The award-winning solution can be fully integrated with MITRE ATT&CK, fits seamlessly into existing security strategies and uses powerful automation features to reduce operator workload.

If you would like to learn more please contact one of our specialists to hear about the advantages of leveraging Deception Technology of CounterCraft within your organization.