How credit unions can embrace automation in cybersecurity: Three solutions
Publisher’s Note: CUInsight is hosting a free webinar Wednesday, June 14 titled, “Demystifying the complexities of AI & cybersecurity: Selling the Benefits of a SOC to Business Leaders” We hope you’ll join us! Register here.
Faced with constantly evolving cyber threats, today’s cybersecurity teams must embrace the new reality and digital transformation. The pandemic accelerated some of these evolutions, like more cloud users, more cloud providers, and an obscene number of devices passing Internet of Things (IoT) data to the cloud. All are interdependent and interconnected, delivering the scale, speed, and connectivity expected in our daily digital personal and work lives. More importantly, all, unfortunately, expanding every credit union’s attack surface for cybercriminals.
Cybersecurity teams are implementing AI-powered automation, like machine learning, to illuminate, assess, and respond to threats facing credit unions’ systems, networks, and data into Security Operations Platforms. To better understand how AI works within cybersecurity, exploring the different solutions can make credit unions more knowledgeable about protecting themselves from cybercriminals.
To skim the surface, here are three solutions cybersecurity teams use that incorporate AI:
Three automation cybersecurity solutions for credit unions
- User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
UEBA is a machine learning cybersecurity process and analytical tool usually included with security operation platforms. It is the process of gathering insight into users’ daily activities. Activity is flagged if any abnormal behavior is detected or if there are deviations from an employee’s normal activity patterns. For example, if a user usually downloads four megabytes of assets weekly, then suddenly downloads 15 gigabytes of data in one day, your team would immediately be alerted because this is abnormal behavior.
The foundation of UEBA can be pretty simple. A cybercriminal could easily steal the credentials of one of your employees and gain access, but it is much more difficult for them to mimic that employee’s daily behavior in order to go unseen. Without UEBA, an organization wouldn’t be able to tell if there was an attack because the cybercriminal has the employee’s credentials. Having a dedicated Managed Detection and Response team to alert you can give credit unions visibility beyond its boundaries.
Preventative measures are not sufficient. It is better to have the mindset that if a cybercriminal penetrates your system, how will you know or be alerted? Detection is equally as important if there is a foreign intruder.
- Security, Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR)
SOAR is a form of pure automation. As defined by Gartner, a SOAR product combines threat intelligence platform capabilities, orchestration and automation, and incident response in one solution. In addition, Gartner continues, these tools are used for the following operation tasks:
- To document and implement processes
- To support security incident management
- To apply machine-based assistance to human security analysts and operators
- To better operationalize the use of threat intelligence
SOAR takes how cybersecurity teams analyze, respond, and manage alerts to the next level. When teams are tasked with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of alerts daily, there is no room for human error when evaluating which one should be prioritized as high-risk. SOAR automates and systematically orchestrates credit unions’ managed detection and response teams’ response and alert processes. SOAR functions can initiate and disable accounts in machine time to contain the threat and reduce the amount of damage done. This can occur before an analyst even has eyes on it.
- Threat Intelligence
Threat intelligence gathers multi-source, raw, curated data about existing threat actors and their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). This helps cybersecurity analysts understand how cybercriminals penetrate networks so they can identify signs early in the attack process. For example, a campaign using stolen lawsuit information to target law firms could be modified to target credit unions using stolen litigation documents.
Threat intelligence professionals proactively threat hunt for suspicious activity indicating network compromise or malicious activity. This is often a manual process backed by automated searches and existing collected network data correlation. Whereas other detection methods can only detect known categorized threats.
Credit unions embracing automation cybersecurity solutions
Credit unions need to build a cybersecurity infrastructure embracing the power of AI, deep learning, and machine learning to handle the scale of analysis and data. AI has emerged as a required technology for cybersecurity teams, on top of being one of the most used buzzwords in recent years. People can no longer scale to protect the complex attack surfaces of credit unions by themselves. So, when evaluating security operations platforms, credit unions need to know how AI can help identify, prioritize risk, and help instantly spot intrusions before they start.
Is your security defenses ready?
Cybercriminals don’t work a 9-5 schedule; they work around the clock all year round. Most attacks occur during off hours, either on the weekends or late night/early morning, to maximize the probability of a successful attack. One of the main benefits of ensuring AI is incorporated into your cybersecurity products and services is the 24×7 network monitoring, which can respond immediately when any threat is detected.
Revolutionize your credit union’s tech infrastructure with Adlumin’s innovative solutions, embracing AI. Learn more about how Adlumin’s cybersecurity experts can help you prioritize cybersecurity and test your defenses. Or get started with a demo.
Register today!
Don’t miss out on Adlumin’s cybersecurity experts hosting a webinar with CUInsight on June 14, 2023, at 1 pm EDT via Zoom.
Attendees will join Mark Sangster, Vice President, Chief of Strategy at Adlumin, as he shares practical insights to understand better and utilize AI and machine learning systems. Mark will demystify the complexities of cybersecurity and break down the ones and zeros, making it easy for attendees to grasp.
