A Comprehensive Guide to Cyber Security Monitoring

Cyber security monitoring is a critical defence strategy for organisations to protect networks, systems, and data from cyber threats. Failing to maintain continuous security monitoring can seriously affect the organisation.

On September 2nd, 2024, Transport for London (TfL) announced they are addressing a cyber security incident. On Monday, Shashi Verma, TfL’s CTO, stated “We have implemented security measures on our internal systems to address an ongoing cyber security incident. The security of our systems and customer data is a top priority, and we will continue to evaluate the situation during and after the incident.”

As per the Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2024, 31% of businesses have conducted cybersecurity risk assessments in the past year. These numbers rise to 63% for medium companies and 72% for enterprises.

In this blog post, we will explore cybersecurity monitoring, its benefits, and challenges, and share proven cyber security monitoring tools for businesses to prevent cyber attacks.

What Is Cyber Security Monitoring?

Cyber Security Threat Monitoring is the continuous process of detecting, analysing, and responding to potential security threats across an organisation’s network, systems, and data.

It involves using advanced tools and techniques for security controls to monitor suspicious activities, vulnerabilities, and data breaches in real time.

In addition, this allows organisations to take proactive security measures to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability (CIA Triad - pillars of data security) of your data assets.

How Does Cyber Security Threat Monitoring Work?

Cyber security monitoring begins with the continuous data collection from multiple sources including network traffic, endpoint devices, and security logs within an organisation's IT environment.

Endpoint detection and response tools are crucial for analysing data from endpoint devices such as laptops, mobile devices, and servers and identifying potential threats.

Furthermore, the data is then processed using techniques like real-time analysis and threat detection to effectively identify indicators of compromise.

Once a potential threat is detected, the system alerts the security teams, who then investigate and respond to the incident.

Cyber threat monitoring also involves event management, where security events are categorised and prioritised based on severity. This ensures that critical threats are addressed first, minimising the risk of successful cyber-attacks.

Why Is Continuous Cybersecurity Monitoring Important?

Continuous monitoring is crucial because cybersecurity threats are constantly evolving. New vulnerabilities emerge regularly, and attackers always look for ways to exploit them.

Effective cyber security monitoring helps you maintain an up-to-date awareness of your security posture and quickly detect and respond to potential threats.

This proactive approach helps to prevent data breaches, detect cyber attacks, minimise the impact of potential security incidents, and ensure compliance with industry regulations.

Benefits of Cyber Security Monitoring

Here’s why investing in continuous cyber security monitoring is essential:

1. Real-Time Threat Detection

Cybersecurity monitoring provides real-time visibility into your IT environment. It allows for immediate detection of suspicious activities, enabling swift action before threats escalate into serious breaches.

Also, real-time threat and endpoint detection and response are vital for minimising damage and preventing data loss.

2. Proactive Risk Management

With endpoint monitoring, you can proactively manage endpoint detection by identifying vulnerabilities before they get exploited.

Vulnerability management is crucial for identifying and addressing security risks before they can be exploited. This helps to implement timely patches and updates, reduces the attack surface, and strengthens the overall security.

3. Enhanced Incident Response

A well-monitored cybersecurity system facilitates faster incident response. When threats are detected early, organisations can quickly initiate containment and recovery processes, reducing downtime and minimising the impact of a breach.

Having a well-defined incident response plan is essential for quickly initiating containment and recovery processes.

4. Comprehensive Reporting and Analytics

Cybersecurity monitoring systems often come with advanced reporting and analytics features. The cyber security monitoring tools provide valuable insights into security trends through security analytics and help organisations understand the threat landscape better and make informed decisions about their cybersecurity strategy.

5. Support for Threat Intelligence Integration

Businesses can stay ahead of emerging threats by integrating threat intelligence with cybersecurity monitoring. Also, businesses can better anticipate and defend against new attack vectors by analysing data from various sources.

Challenges of In-house Cyber Security Monitoring

Here are the key challenges involved in creating effective, in-house cyber security monitoring:

1. Resource Constraints

In-house cyber security monitoring requires a significant investment in resources, including skilled personnel, technology, and ongoing training.

Many organisations struggle to maintain a dedicated security team due to the high costs and the challenge of finding qualified cybersecurity professionals.

Additionally, this creates gaps in security coverage and visibility and increases vulnerability. Furthermore, the rise of remote working environments has expanded the potential for various threats and network vulnerabilities.

2. 24/7 Monitoring Requirements

Effective cybersecurity monitoring demands continuous, round-the-clock surveillance. This means having a team available 24/7 to detect and respond to potential risks and threats, which can be challenging for smaller organisations.

A security operations centre can help provide the necessary continuous operations and alleviate staff burnout. The need for continuous operations can lead to burnout among staff and difficulty in maintaining consistent vigilance.

3. Integration and Management of Multiple Tools

Cyber security threat monitoring often involves various tools and technologies, such as intrusion detection systems (IDS), firewalls, antivirus software, security information and event management (SIEM) platforms, and threat intelligence feeds.

Therefore, integrating and managing these tools can be complex and time-consuming.

Misconfigurations or failures in integration can result in missed threats or false positives, hindering the effectiveness of the security monitoring and process.

4. Scalability Issues

As organisations grow, their IT infrastructure becomes more complex, making it increasingly difficult to scale in-house cyber security monitoring efforts.

Scalable security solutions are essential for expanding the monitoring system to cover new assets, devices, network traffic and users within corporate networks.

Expanding the monitoring system can strain resources and lead to gaps in existing security measures if not managed properly.

Also, scaling up often requires additional hardware, software, and personnel investment, which can be prohibitive for some businesses.

Cyber Security Monitoring Tools

Security automation tools can help streamline the detection, data analysis, and response to security threats.

Several tools are available to assist with cyber security monitoring. These tools help organisations to detect, analyse, and respond to security threats effectively.

Here are some of the best cyber security monitoring tools for businesses:

1. Managed Detection and Response (MDR)

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) is a comprehensive cybersecurity service that integrates advanced monitoring tools with expert human analysis to ensure proactive threat detection and incident response.

MDR is particularly valuable for organisations that lack the resources to manage in-house security.

For example, suppose threat actors breach a company’s defences and begin moving laterally within the computer network. The MDR service detects suspicious activity, and experts immediately respond by isolating the affected systems, analysing the attack, and working to remove the threat, all while keeping the organisation informed.

Best MDR Tools:

• SentinelOne Vigilance

• Bitdefender

• CrowdStrike

2. Extended Detection and Response (XDR)

Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is an advanced security solution that integrates and correlates data across multiple security layers to provide a comprehensive view of an organisation’s cyber security.

Security incident response is a key component of XDR, enabling a unified response to neutralise threats across all affected systems.

For example, suppose an attacker attempts to breach the network security through multiple vectors, such as exploiting a vulnerability in a web application while simultaneously trying to access endpoints.

XDR would correlate these activities, recognising them as part of a coordinated cyber attack, and enable a unified response to neutralise the threat across all affected systems.

Best XDR tools:

• Microsoft 365 Defender

• SentinelOne Singularity XDR

• Bitdefender

3. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS)

Intrusion Detection System is critical for network security monitoring to detect suspicious or malicious activity.

These systems perform network monitoring by analysing data packets as they move through the network, looking for patterns or anomalies that match known attack signatures and identified threats.

For example, if an attacker tries to access the network through a brute-force attack, the IDS will detect repeated failed login attempts and raise an alert as a part of network monitoring.

Best IDS tools:

• Trend Micro TippingPoint

• Cisco Secure Firewall

• Trellix Intrusion Prevention System

4. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

SIEM systems are designed to provide a comprehensive view of the organisation’s security landscape by aggregating and analysing log data from various sources within the network, a process that includes log management.

For example, An SIEM system might detect a correlation between a series of failed login attempts and a subsequent successful login from an unusual location, indicating a potentially compromised account.

Best SIEM Tools:

• Microsoft Azure Sentinel

• Exabeam Fusion

• Splunk

5. Vulnerability Scanners

Vulnerability scanners are automated tools that perform a vulnerability assessment by scanning an organisation’s network security to identify weaknesses or vulnerabilities which attackers can exploit.

For example, a vulnerability scanner detects a critical server running outdated software and is susceptible to a known exploit, prompting immediate action to patch the vulnerability.

Best Vulnerability scanner tools:

• Intruder

• Qualys

• Acunetix

How can Aztech help you?

Aztech specialises in providing comprehensive cybersecurity services and monitoring solutions tailored to your organisation’s needs. Our team of cybersecurity experts utilises cutting-edge cybersecurity monitoring tools to ensure continuous monitoring of your network, systems, and endpoints.

We offer a range of managed security services such as a Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service, Extended Detection and Response (XDR) service, Mobile Device Management (MDM) service and Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) service to help you detect and respond to cyber threats effectively.

Our skilled analysts combine advanced threat detection and automated solutions for real-time network security monitoring, intrusion detection and analysis, and endpoint monitoring and response. Using behavioural analytics, machine learning, and threat intelligence, we go beyond traditional antivirus to protect endpoints and firewalls.

Summary

In conclusion, cybersecurity monitoring involves detecting cyber threats and breaches. This is done by monitoring network security and endpoint levels.

Network security monitoring tools collect and analyse security logs from various sources. Endpoint security technologies offer security visibility at the host level, enabling cyber monitoring teams to detect threats earlier in the kill chain.

In addition, security monitoring solutions are essential for detecting cyber threats and maintaining robust security.

Cyber monitoring, supported by advanced cyber security monitoring tools and expert MDR services provided by Aztech, enables organisations to stay ahead of cyber attacks, protect sensitive data, and maintain a robust security posture.