How Advanced Threat Protection Keeps Data Safe and Secure

Advanced threat protection (ATP) defends your organization’s data against sophisticated threats that slip past traditional security systems. It combines multiple layers of security to detect and respond to threats.

Unlike traditional security systems, ATP proactively identifies and blocks threats before they infiltrate a network. 

These types of threats usually compromise the most accessible targets and propagate laterally through the system. Attackers use social engineering and phishing to target victims who are easy to reach. To protect against such attacks, it’s advisable to use a cloud email security solution with advanced threat protection (ATP) capabilities.

In this article, we explain how ATP works and its benefits and challenges so you have the info you need to choose a good solution and maintain a solid security posture. 

The importance of advanced threat protection

ATP solutions deliver a multi-layered approach to cybersecurity and offer a comprehensive defense against complex threats when standard security isn’t enough.

One of these intricate schemes is known as an advanced persistent threat (APT). Hackers use these attacks to gain access to a network and remain undetected for years. They can conduct espionage and cause significant damage by exfiltrating large volumes of data. These attacks are usually targeted at a specific organization where attackers can access funding to adapt an attack and maintain access to a network.

Another threat comes in the form of zero-day exploits. They take advantage of unaddressed vulnerabilities. Zero-day exploits are dangerous because they let attackers compromise network security without getting detected. 

Present security systems, such as intrusion prevention systems and others, rely on identifying malware signatures to detect threats. However, when the threat is unknown or not yet updated on malware databases, it becomes tricky to catch it through standard systems. For example, in APTs, the malware keeps changing to avoid detection. 

In such situations, advanced threat protection solutions become essential for organizations. These software rely on monitoring behavior for detection. They use advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms to identify patterns and behavior that might indicate a potential zero-day attack or an APT. 

How does advanced threat protection work?

Advanced threat protection detects threats before attackers can access critical data. If a breach has already occurred, it disrupts malicious activity in progress and interrupts the attack’s lifecycle to stop the threat from propagating forward.

Several components and functions support ATP solutions, including:

• Continuous monitoring. ATP software monitors systems and networks to detect threats before they do damage. It gives you real-time visibility of threats so you can deal with them promptly. These systems look at caches to examine a file and determine whether it’s sketchy.
• Prompt response. ATP systems supply context with the alerts they send out. This lets businesses respond quickly and in an organized manner. 
• Data awareness. ATP software gives you information about enterprise data and its sensitivity, value, and other factors. You’re meant to use it to consider all relevant factors while formulating response strategies.
• Antivirus scanning. This looks out for viruses that try to infiltrate systems through emails or other vulnerable areas.
• Static and dynamic analysis. ATP systems examine files for damaging code or instructions. Many solutions use a sandboxing feature offered by their managed security service provider (MSSP) to execute the file in a controlled environment. In this analysis, even if the file contains a threat, it stays harmless. 
• Network traffic analysis. This monitors the network for any operational or security anomalies. 

How to choose and implement ATP

List your organization’s security needs first to compare competitive ATP solutions on the market effectively. This narrows your search to solutions that integrate easily into your IT infrastructure. Then, look into how easily you can train your team on the ATP solution. This training will be crucial for the staff during security incidents where the situation is more chaotic. 

Answers to these questions will help you find a suitable tool. Make sure you also understand how your ATP tool keeps you safe in the face of malware, phishing, APTs, zero-day attacks, or ransomware. In a perfect world, your solution detects threats in real-time and improves its capabilities through machine learning. 

Test your software after you make a choice. Before integrating it with your organization’s infrastructure, verify that it detects threats in the way you expect it to. After confirming, install and configure the ATP solution to analyze network traffic and system activities. 

Post integration, train your staff to recognize threat patterns and respond to them. They should clearly understand the protocol, including who to notify and how to document incidents. 

Benefits of advanced threat protection

ATP solutions offer deep visibility into network traffic and find threats engineered to evade standard security tools. They improve the accuracy of attack detection so your team can work on actual intrusions rather than false positives. 

Advanced threat protection systems also cover malware analysis and come with incident response functions. 

Below are some additional benefits that advanced threat protection systems offer.

• Access to global threat networks. ATP solutions have fresh information about new vulnerabilities from their global threat information sharing network. This helps update defense techniques against emerging threats 
• Effective threat detection and response. Your solution provides you with details about attacks, including severity and potential data loss. Use this information to prioritize remediation measures quickly and minimize the impact. 

Challenges with using advanced threat protection solutions

ATP solutions are complex and require decent expertise to manage them effectively. It might be challenging for you if you don’t have a dedicated security team. 

Below are some common issues users face while managing or using ATP software. 

• Cost. ATP solutions require sizable investments and can be expensive for small or medium-sized businesses. However, when compared with the cost of a data breach, investments in an ATP could be worth the price. 

• False positives and negatives. False alerts plague ATP solutions and lead to unnecessary investments of time and resources i. No solution can be 100% accurate, but luckily machine learning is consistently improving ATP accuracy. 

• Evolving cyber threats. As threats increase sophistication, keeping up with the changing threat landscape sometimes becomes tricky. Machine learning helps deal by improving the system's ability to detect and respond to threats based on past data.

• Expertise. ATP software requires people with relevant knowledge and skills to manage it. Retaining staff further amps up the cost, especially when the job market is competitive. 

How to protect against advanced threats

Advanced threat attacks usually take the form of phishing or malware. The idea is to compromise a user account with low privileges and then move laterally through the network, corrupting accounts with more access along the way.

The advanced threats may also show up as password-cracking attempts if a business doesn’t enable their users to use multi-factor authentication (MFA). Sometimes, hackers also create a backdoor for re-entry into the systems in the future. 

Advanced threat protection solutions use static and dynamic analysis to scan suspicious files in environments shielded from the rest of the network. However, in some attacks, even ATP’s defenses fail. You need to make sure your team is well-trained and informed about security best practices to avoid becoming a victim of these attacks. 

Teach them to: 

• Avoid clicking or downloading suspicious links or attachments.
• Keep their sensitive login credential secret in every situation
• Use different passwords to log into all accounts; use longer passwords with different kinds of characters. 

Learn more about different data security best practices your team can adopt to minimize cybersecurity risks. 

Understand your current security stance

Establish metrics that help you define and measure the state of your current security. In some cases, you might need a few tweaks to maintain a robust security posture. Some companies might require a complete overhaul of their security setup. 

Understand the skills and expertise of your security team and close any gaps. You can always outsource the necessary skill set or adopt a managed security service provider to give your team a hand. 

Adopt a network-based approach and implement lifecycle defences

Keep a watch on the entire network, as well as its devices and endpoints. You need to examine the network traffic and implement a closed-loop system that investigates the complete network traffic lifecycle. A closed loop system is a system that uses feedback to automatically regulate itself to maintain a desired state or set point

This observation will allow you to study the threat’s behavior throughout the network from start to finish.  

Protect yourself

According to IBM, companies take 197 days to detect a data breach and 69 days to contain it. This means that attackers have a long time to obtain ample data about your business and its customers.

Data security compromises like this lead to financial and reputational damages that diminish your customers' trust in your business. You can turn to ATP solutions to prevent attacks and safeguard customer data. 

Learn more about data security and how it can protect your organization’s data from malicious practices.