Member Article

Cyber Research Records a 91% Reduction in Dwell Time for Deception technology Users

70% of users highly familiar with deception technology report a high confidence for detecting threats, according to a new research report, conducted by Enterprise Management Associates and commissioned by Attivo Networks.

The report aimed to explore attitudes and views of deception technology in the enterprise and uncovered material contrasts between users and non-users of deception technologies.

Further findings highlighted that users of deception technology reported a 12X improvement in the average number of days it takes to detect attackers operating within an enterprise network when compared to those unfamiliar with the technology.

Other studies conducted by incident response service providers or endpoint detection and response vendors suggest an average of 78 to over 100 days, while survey respondents that are highly familiar users of deception technology reported dwell times as low as 5.5 days.

The research explored the primary motivation for looking at deception technology and found 67% of respondents were evaluating or planning to look at deception technology and cited the speed of detecting threats early in the attack lifecycle as the primary driver behind their interest.

Respondents reported deployment environments including the cloud (27%), IoT/OT/Specialized (15%), remote locations (11%), and headquarter offices (10%), validating the utilization across diverse attack surfaces. These findings are consistent with the detection survey conducted in 2018 by Attivo Networks, where 62% of respondents rated cloud and 34% identified OT/specialized environments as the top attack surfaces of concern.

“Attacker dwell time has become a measure of security effectiveness for many organizations, and the industry as a whole has seen incremental progress in reducing the number of days that attackers remain undetected within enterprise networks.

But a 91% reduction in dwell time – down to 5.5 days – is the most dramatic decrease any study we have done has ever documented,“ said Paula Musich, research director in security and risk management at Enterprise Management Associates in Boulder, Colo.

“Quantifying the ROI of security controls can be extremely challenging and is often tied to overall breach metrics that can be heavily debated,” says Carolyn Crandall, Chief Deception Officer and CMO of Attivo Networks. “This survey is particularly interesting in that it quantifies the specific value derived and the sentiment of deception technology users compared to non-users.”

Crandall continues, “Cybersecurity has traditionally been a ‘cat and mouse game’ between IT teams and cyber attackers, with a cybercriminal’s arsenal continually evolving. Deception technology, however, shifts power back to the defender, giving organizations visibility and early detection, company-specific threat intelligence, and faster incident response.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by TH .