Cyber security vendor Sophos, has unveiled an updated version of its endpoint detection and response (EDR), the first solution designed for both security analysts and IT administrators, available now in Sophos Intercept X Advanced and Intercept X Advanced for Server with EDR.
The company said significant advancements and new capabilities make it faster and easier than ever before for security analysts to identify and neutralise evasive threats, and for IT administrators to proactively maintain secure IT operations to reduce risk.
Sophos also published new research, “An Insider View into the Increasingly Complex Kingminer Botnet,” underscoring the use of servers in carrying out attacks and the importance of threat intelligence in detecting such activity.
According to Sophos, the opportunistic Kingminer botnet attempts to gain server access by brute-forcing login credentials, and Sophos now finds that it’s using the infamous EternalBlue exploit in an attempt to spread malware among other attack mechanisms. The new version of Sophos EDR offers a custom-built query engine to detect indicators of compromise.
Kingminer shares many of the attributes that advanced ransomware attackers use to gain access, evidence of the need for EDR with the ability to hunt active attacks. As Sophos recently discovered in its State of Ransomware 2020 survey, only 24% of organisations breached in a ransomware incident were able to detect the intrusion and stop it before it was able to encrypt their files. Sophos’ new EDR capabilities help security and IT teams detect threats and breaches that could otherwise take months to uncover.
“Cyber criminals are raising the stakes, stopping at nothing to capitalise on expanded attack surfaces as organisations increasingly move to the cloud and enable remote workforces. Servers and other endpoints are all too insufficiently protected, creating vulnerable entry points that are ripe for attackers to exploit,” said Dan Schiappa, chief product officer, Sophos. “Sophos EDR helps identify these attacks, preventing breaches and shining light on otherwise dark areas. Live querying capabilities only available with Sophos EDR in Intercept X enable organisations to search for past indicators of compromise and determine the current system state. This level of intelligence is critical in understanding changing attacker behaviours and reducing attacker dwell time.”
Sophos EDR now provides powerful visibility across an organization’s entire estate, enabling security and IT practitioners to quickly answer critical threat hunting and IT security operations questions, and easily respond. New features include:
Live Discover and Live Response.
The security vendor said Live Discover pinpoints past and present activity with up to 90 days of data retention. Sophos EDR is powered by Sophos’ deep learning neural network, which is trained on hundreds of millions of samples to look for threat indicators. Security analysts and IT administrators also gain on-demand access to curated threat intelligence from SophosLabs, which tracks, deconstructs and analyzes more than 400,000 malware samples every day.