Advanced Threat Protection: All You Need to Know

Over time, network threats have become increasingly complex and covert. Hackers and malicious attackers have adopted more advanced techniques, such as zero-day exploits, targeted attacks, and advanced persistent threats (APT). Traditional security measures are inadequate in effectively addressing these advanced threats. Therefore, the emergence of advanced threat protection aims to ensure organizations can effectively detect, prevent, and respond to sophisticated attacks.

What Is Advanced Threat Protection?

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) refers to a category of security solutions aimed at defending against complex malware or hacker-based attacks targeting sensitive data. ATP solutions can be provided as software or hosted services. The approaches and components of ATP solutions may vary, but most commonly include endpoint agents, network devices, email gateways, malware protection systems, and some form of centralized management console for correlating alerts and managing defenses.

Why Is Advanced Threat Prevention Important?

In recent years, the landscape of network threats has rapidly evolved. The IT environments of organizations have changed due to the shift to the cloud and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Concurrently, threat actors in the digital realm have become more sophisticated and professional, resulting in more impactful attacks with higher costs. With the widespread adoption of remote work, endpoints have become the first line of defense in many organizations' network security strategies. This means that complex attacks target these endpoints and require advanced endpoint security solutions to protect them.

Advanced Threat Protection solutions aim to provide this high-level protection. They utilize various next-generation security measures to detect network attacks early in their lifecycle, enabling them to break the attack chain and prevent attacks before they cause significant harm to the endpoints.

Benefits of Advanced Threat Protection

In the modern threat landscape, ATP empowers you to fight fire with fire. Unlike traditional security products that are often disparate single-purpose solutions, today's most effective tools can work together to provide you with:

• Real-Time Threat Visibility: The high volume of threats in today's environment doesn't allow you to wait for scheduled scans to see if you're secure. Unlike traditional antivirus solutions, effective advanced threat protection constantly monitors all your traffic.

• Shared Cloud Intelligence: Patching your defenses is inconvenient at best and impossible at worst. With threat intelligence provided by the cloud, a given solution can block new threats anywhere once it's blocked them anywhere.

• Centralized Context and Correlation: Reactive, real-time, and predictive security measures supported by advanced artificial intelligence provide your security team with comprehensive insights. This means faster threat detection, prevention, and remediation.

How Does Advanced Threat Protection Work?

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) employs various techniques and technologies to detect, prevent, and mitigate advanced and targeted threats. While the specific workings may vary depending on the solution, here are some common elements and approaches used in ATP:

• Behavioral Analysis: ATP solutions analyze the behavior of files, processes, and network traffic to identify suspicious activities. By establishing a baseline of normal behavior, any deviations or anomalous behavior can be flagged as potential threats.

• Threat Intelligence: ATP solutions incorporate threat intelligence from various sources, including global threat feeds, security research organizations, and internal telemetry. This information helps identify emerging threats, known indicators of compromise (IOCs), and malicious IP addresses, domains, or URLs.

• Sandboxing: Sandboxing is a technique where suspicious files or processes are executed in isolated environments to observe their behavior. ATP solutions use sandboxing to analyze potentially malicious files and determine if they exhibit any malicious activities or attempt to exploit vulnerabilities.

• Endpoint Protection: ATP focuses on protecting endpoints, such as laptops, desktops, and mobile devices, since they are often the entry point for attacks. Endpoint agents or sensors are deployed to monitor and protect these devices. They can detect and block malicious files, network connections, and other activities that indicate an attack.

• Network Traffic Analysis: ATP solutions examine network traffic to identify suspicious or malicious patterns, communication with known malicious domains or IP addresses, and command-and-control (C2) communications. Deep packet inspection and network behavioral analysis help detect and block malicious activities at the network level.

• Centralized Management and Reporting: ATP solutions typically provide a centralized management console that allows security teams to monitor and manage security events, configure policies, and investigate incidents. This centralization enables efficient management, correlation of alerts, and streamlined incident response.

How to Choose the Right Advanced Threat Protection Solution

Advanced Threat Protection security is crucial for every organization, but each enterprise has unique requirements to consider when selecting an advanced threat protection solution, including:

• Regulatory Compliance: Compliance requirements vary based on geographic location and industry, ranging from HIPAA to GDPR. Advanced threat protection solutions need to integrate with compliance technologies.

• Scalability: With security costs reaching unsustainable levels, ATP solutions need to leverage artificial intelligence to provide additional value in the future.

• Vulnerabilities: What specific data and storage vulnerabilities exist? Choosing a new solution should address any existing gaps in security.

• Ease of Deployment: Integration shouldn't be complex. It may not even require agents. Onboarding new users across roles should be straightforward.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is an essential component of modern cybersecurity strategies. As organizations face increasingly sophisticated and targeted threats, ATP solutions provide a proactive defense mechanism to detect, prevent, and mitigate advanced attacks. FS.com provides a series of next-generation firewall that integrate advanced security functions beyond traditional firewalls, such as application identification and control, user behavior analysis and threat intelligence integration, to provide comprehensive protection against advanced threats.