eSentire esLog: adapting MDR for cloud workloads

Each time I attend one of the major cybersecurity conferences such as RSA or Black Hat, it is simultaneously familiar and eye-opening. Familiar because one sees the same bewildering array of vendors pitching products in new marketing shrink-wrap. Eye-opening because one sees the security buyer trying hard to reconcile the new cyber threat landscape exposed by macro-trends like cloud computing.

The big thing that stood out at Black Hat USA 2018 was risk-centric positioning. Similar to machine learning or SecOps in the past, every vendor seemed to work this into their headline. Let’s face it: today’s IT landscape is more complex than ever: always-connected mobile users, vanishing perimeters and the flight of compute and storage to the cloud. Securing and monitoring have become more complicated and risky. CISOs are struggling to map existing security frameworks and techniques to the cloud, one of which is the SIEM.

Security Information and Event Management is a relatively mature solution that provides a holistic view of an organization’s information technology (IT) security. The underlying principle of a SIEM is that relevant data about an enterprise’s security is produced from multiple sources and must be correlated. By collecting and collating all data in a single location it becomes easier to spot patterns, run searches and hunt for threats. This approach has historically worked well in traditional fix-capacity environments. As threat actors evolve and IT environments continue to move to pure or hybrid cloud deployments, extracting meaningful and actionable information from SIEMs has proven difficult, requiring continuous creation of manual rules and policy updates to detect evasive threats.

What works in the prem may not work in the cloud

When an organization moves systems it the cloud--especially where they consume software-as-a-service offerings--many valuable log sources once ingested on-premises become unavailable. Underlying operating systems, hardware and network devices are often maintained by the cloud service provider, so the business becomes opaque to the holistic security picture. Consequently, the SOC is unable to correlate security telemetry across the full stack and detect threats in the cloud-based infrastructure. This makes it impossible to detect and respond to an attack or report on compliance.

The underpinning cloud architecture needs to be integrated with the SIEM so that interfaces open up for event log collection from some of the normally inaccessible underpinning systems and components. For the most comprehensive coverage, a cloud-based SIEM must ingest the security telemetry from underlying operating systems, network devices and applications. Only then will the security operations team have the complete information they need to detect and respond to cyber attacks.

The new eSentire esLOG, powered by Sumo Logic, is a multi-tenant big data security analytics platform built to solve exactly these problems. esLOG meets regulatory monitoring and reporting requirements without the complexity and cost of a traditional SIEM. Aggregated log data from network assets, endpoints, applications and cloud services enhance the reach of our managed detection and response services. Combined with additional telemetry from esENDPOINT and full packet capture from esNETWORK, eSentire SOC analysts have a full spectrum canvas that eliminates blind spots where threats can lurk. The solution lets you visually correlate events over time and communicate details of multi-stage attacks. This, in conjunction with the native machine learning, can help corral dangerous offenders including insider attacks.

Unlike some Managed Detection and Response providers that rely solely on SIEMs and are limited to simple alerts generated by myopic prevention technologies, esLOG, when deployed with esENDPOINT and esNETWORK, enables analysts to go beyond alerts and empowers their ability to take action on your behalf. Implementing host isolation or network communication disruption of a threat actor, threats are contained in near real-time mitigating risk to your organization.

Download the Data Sheet

eSentire esLOG collects, aggregates and monitors data across on-premises, cloud, multi-cloud, and hybrid platforms like AWS, Microsoft Azure, Apache, and Google Cloud Platform providing our SOC analysts with full spectrum visibility to threats across your entire threat landscape.

• Azure Cloud Security
  • esLOG utilizes machine learning and monitoring capabilities across your Azure environment for real-time visibility, analysis and data visualizations
• Google Cloud Platform Security
  • esLOG integrates directly into your GCP environment and with instant insights into potential security issues and user activity for Google VPC, IAM, Cloud Audit and Google App Engine
• AWS Security
  • esLOG integrates with your AWS cloud environment providing our SOC analysts with a comprehensive view to see who is accessing AWS and when they make changes (CloudTrail), what they change (Config), where this impacts network traffic and latency (VPC Flow), and how this affects your security and compliance posture (Inspector)
• Apps for Extended Log Analytics

esLOG extends functionality of log analytics with an extensive library of apps that help to optimize data collection for better security monitoring

We are merely scratching the surface. The underlying Sumo Logic platform integrates with a galaxy of vendors and SaaS-based solutions which can be found here. eSentire threat analysts can now bring the same world class threat hunting skills to your cloud workloads. Watch this space for additional updates over the next few weeks.

Contact one of our solution engineers to learn more.