How to Identify Indicators of Compromise
Organizations should implement a robust security monitoring program to help detect IoCs. To identify IoCs, companies should look for:
- Anomalous network traffic patterns.
- Known-bad or unknown files or processes on the system.
- Suspicious or unusual login attempts.
- Unusual behavior in user and privileged accounts.
- Increases in access attempts reads, and writes for corporate files.
- Modifications to files, applications, or the Windows Registry.
Examples of Indicators of Compromise (IOC)
IoC comes in various forms. Some common examples of IoC include:
- Unusual network traffic patterns such as large amounts of data leaving the network.
- Geographic traffic abnormalities such as traffic from countries where a company doesn’t do business.
- Unknown applications or ones matching hashes from threat intelligence feeds.
- Unusual activity from administrative and privileged accounts.
- Anomalous login attempts (unusual timing, location, intervals, etc.)
- Increase in reads of corporate databases, files, etc.
- Suspicious changes to settings, the Windows Registry, and files to create persistence or undermine security.
- DNS or HTTPS requests to unknown, suspicious, or known bad domains.
- Large numbers of compressed or encrypted files.
These are some of the most common examples of IoC, but they may be a partial list. In general, anything that can be used to determine whether a threat is present on an organization’s systems — or is likely to be present — is a potential IoC that the organization can monitor for and act upon if needed.
IOC Management
Indicators of compromise can be an invaluable tool for organizations looking to identify and mitigate cybersecurity incidents more effectively. However, management of these IoCs is essential to using them effectively.
Some key capabilities include:
- Centralized Management: Organizations will collect and use IoCs across their entire IT infrastructure. A centralized management platform will enable organizations to ingest, monitor, manage, and use these IoCs more effectively.
- Source Convergence: Companies will collect IoCs from various internal and external sources. Integrating these diverse data flows into a single data set enables an organization to leverage additional context to more quickly and accurately detect and remediate potential cybersecurity incidents.
- Solution Integration: Rapid response is essential to minimize the potential impacts of a security incident. Integration of an IoC management platform with an organization’s existing security solutions enables these solutions to receive and act on IoCs automatically.
Why Your Organization Should Monitor for Indicators of Compromise
Cyberattacks are a near-daily occurrence, and, if successful, can have significant impacts on an organization, its systems, and its customers. Preventing these attacks or remediating them as quickly as possible may be essential to the business’s profitability and ability to continue operating.
To find and respond to a security incident, an organization’s security team needs to know what to look for. This is where IoCs enter the picture. An IoC describes artifacts or behaviors that indicate the presence of malware or other cyber threats on the system.
As a result, IoC monitoring and management is a key component of a corporate cybersecurity strategy. Without visibility into these IoCs and whether they are present in an organization’s systems, the company doesn’t know whether or not it is facing an active security incident.
IoC Management with Check Point Infinity XDR/XPR
IoCs are an invaluable tool for a corporate cybersecurity program. However, they only reach their full potential if properly monitored and managed. If an organization isn’t automatically monitoring for IoCs or lacks the ability to respond rapidly once an intrusion is detected, then a cyber threat actor has an additional opportunity to wreak havoc within corporate systems.
Check Point Infinity XDR/XPR IOC Manager provides companies with the tools they need to manage IoCs across their entire IT environments. A centralized management platform offers a user-friendly interface for managing IoCs and the ability to enforce security controls and incident response in real-time. Additionally, the IOC Manager offers excellent scalability, enabling it to meet the needs of any organization, from SMB to enterprise.
The full IOC management capabilities are best demonstrated as part of Check Point’s Infinity Extended Prevention and Response (XDR/XDP) offering. To learn more about protecting your organization against cyber threats and see the capabilities that Infinity XDR/XPR and IOC manager bring to the table, sign up for a free demo today.
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