An active defense posture, where the defenders actively use threat intelligence and their own telemetry to uncover potential compromises, is the next stage in the cyber security maturity road. Instead of waiting for detections to trigger, defenders can take initiative and hunt threat actors.

Thursday, February 9, 2023 08:02

**Active defense a key approach to protecting against major threats**

Having an active defense posture, where the defenders actively use threat intelligence and their own environment telemetry to uncover potential compromises, is the next stage in the cyber security maturity road. Instead of waiting for detections to trigger, defenders can take initiative and hunt down threat actors inside their environment, putting a halt to their malicious activities before they can fully accomplish their goals.  

Ransomware compromises, which usually involve data exfiltration, are not fast nor swift. Attackers need time to find their way in the network, including identifying the databases with the relevant information they are seeking, to exfiltrate the information and finally to deploy the ransomware. This is the time window when an active defense strategy can make the most impact, by looking from the inside out: The perimeter was already compromised, no relevant alerts were raised, and the attackers have already begun to carry out their malicious activities within the victim’s network.  

Conducting periodic threat hunting exercises increases the chances of detection. However, despite the potential benefits of threat hunting, the odds are against defenders, as the hunter has limited time and resources, their target is unknown, and the type of activity the defender is searching for is often undefined. As threat hunting becomes more routine and as the hunter becomes more familiar with the environment, this exercise will become more efficient, the findings and analysis will become more useful, and the defender’s visibility of the environment will improve.  

Besides the possible detection results, there are two important outcomes of threat hunting:  

*   **Identifying weak spots in the organization’s overall defense.** By analyzing successful detections at a deeper level, defenders can understand what failed and on which levels.  
    
*   **Exposing the blindspots in defenders’ network visibility.** Threat hunting is about analyzing the available information and searching for what shouldn't be there as well as identifying potentially useful data that we don’t have access to.  This type of assessment provides valuable information on what can be improved in the visibility of the environment.  
    

There is no “one size fits all” approach or “magic bullet” solution that will get organizations to their best defense posture. Rather, it's an iterative process that greatly improves with repetition. Threat hunting supports—and can dramatically improve—active defense, particularly when hunt results can be leveraged to  improve the environment. In the next sections, we introduce some of the quick wins that can help organizations implement an effective active defense approach.  

**Monitor DNS queries**

Monitoring the domain name system (DNS) queries provides a unique view into what is going on in the network. Analyzing the DNS query logs and singling out the systems that resolved recently created domains provides a good starting point. The analysis of known malicious domains should also be done, as that would provide visibility into the effectiveness of the first line of defense. Keep in mind that this is about searching for what was not detected, as known malicious domains should already be blocked.  

On the other hand, If a compromise did occur, the DNS query logs may also provide a good source of information about the adversary’s actions and the extent of their malicious activities on the network.

**Create high-priority alerts**

Implement high-priority triggers with near-zero false positive alerts. No organization has unlimited resources to monitor security events, as alert fatigue is a real problem in security operation centers. High-priority triggers won’t eliminate security incidents, but they will help focus on critical events.There are two types of these triggers: generic and intelligence-driven.  

The generic triggers are those that are designed to alert in the event of abnormal behavior usually triggered by attackers while trying to establish a foothold or while in search of relevant information. Here are a couple of examples of such triggers:  

*   Canary accounts - Accounts that are not used by the organization but are instead intended to lure malicious actors to use in their operations. Create triggers to events regarding these accounts’ usage.  
    
*   Monitor and raise alerts on administrative accounts - Newly created accounts where privileges are added, or password changes on already existing accounts are good events to monitor.  
    
*   Domain controllers contacting unknown systems - Communications on the domain controllers should be well known. Any communication starting from a domain controller to an unknown system should be targeted for in-depth analysis.  
    
*   Profile key systems’ dual usage tools executions - Attackers often hide their actions by using dual-use tools. Starting with the critical systems, profile the execution of such tools so that abnormal usage can be detected and investigated.  
    
*   Remote administration tools - Having a well-known usage pattern of such tools allows defenders to monitor for  unusual or anomalous usage.  
    

Intelligence-driven triggers, by comparison, are created by analyzing the dynamic tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). Therefore, these triggers should alert on adversaries’ behaviors rather than more static indicators of compromise (IOCs), such as known lists of IPs or domains. Such activity should be detected by basic cyber security tools that are already in place, and these triggers should cover the TTPs generically used by threat actors that are applicable to one's organization. For example, if your organization doesn't use ConnectWise, TeamViewer or Anydesk, create a trigger in your monitoring system that will generate a high-priority alert whenever those tools are executed, as they are commonly used by threat actors. If a defender concludes that there is no way to create such an alert, then a blindspot has been found. The resolution of such an issue should be prioritized based on that organization’s resources and other competing issues that require attention.

**Perform root cause analysis on deep alerts**

The most important question a threat hunter must try to answer while doing detection systems log analysis is, “How did the malware get to the endpoint?” Deep alerts like this, that come from the most inner layer of the security architecture, need to be analyzed.  

Most organizations have a multi-layered, in-depth security architecture. When an endpoint defense system detects and blocks some malicious software, this is good news for the defenders. It's also an opportunity for the threat hunter to identify and improve the security in the organization. Having a multi-layered and in-depth architecture means that there are several security systems between the production systems and the untrusted environments. If a threat was detected and stopped in an organization’s most inner systems, then some outer layer defense failed.  

Conducting a root cause analysis is essential to determining what failed and how, as this will provide invaluable information to the continuous improvement process.  There can be multiple explanations for initial infection. For example, an endpoint can be compromised somewhere else and then connected to the organization’s environment, or credentials can be compromised and used to establish a malicious VPN connection.

**Monitor communications on critical systems**

Critical systems’ communications patterns can be the first high-priority alert indicating the potential exfiltration of information. Organizations don’t have infinite resources, and not all systems have the same value.  For example, a file server will have communications from a lot of systems, but not all systems/endpoints will transfer an abnormal quantity of information in a short amount of time. Or, if all the systems in the environment must use a local DNS server if a system attempts to contact Google or Cloudflare DNS servers, those systems should probably be reviewed. Having a list of critical systems is one of the basic steps that organizations with a mature security posture can take to help detect malicious activity early.  

**Improve your visibility**

Having good visibility into what is happening in the defender's environment is the first step to  performing threat hunting. However, the mere exercise of threat hunting will also show defenders if there are any blindspots, thus providing opportunities for improvement. Visibility should also be seen as a powerful source of information when recovering from a compromise. Organizations often don’t have the means to implement a complete, comprehensive detection system on their entire environment. However, that does not mean that some kind of logging should not be performed. Logs may be extremely relevant during the recovery phase of a compromise. Knowing how and when a compromise occurred, even after the fact, is crucial. Proper logging can be extremely useful in determining this information, especially when analyzed from a threat hunter’s point of view, so that they can also provide information that leads to the development of proper detections.  

**Deploy tiered accounts**

Have administration accounts that are only used on specific systems. Not all systems need to contact all the systems or the internet, and, likewise, not all accounts need to be used on all systems, especially if they are high-privilege accounts. Have specific domain administrator accounts, which are only used on domain controllers, complemented by second-tier administrator accounts. This tiering is done at the functional level and not at the privilege level. These two different account tiers may ultimately have the same privileges, but by tiering their access based on their functions,  it’s possible to set high-priority alerts to trigger when they behave abnormally.

Beyond the basics: Implementing an active defense

A previously unknown threat actor dubbed NewsPenguin has been linked to a phishing campaign targeting Pakistani entities by leveraging the upcoming international maritime expo as a lure.
"The attacker sent out targeted phishing emails with a weaponized document attached that purports to be an exhibitor manual for PIMEC-23," the BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team said.
PIMEC, short for

Cyber Attack / Cyber Threat

A previously unknown threat actor dubbed **NewsPenguin** has been linked to a phishing campaign targeting Pakistani entities by leveraging the upcoming international maritime expo as a lure.

"The attacker sent out targeted phishing emails with a weaponized document attached that purports to be an exhibitor manual for PIMEC-23," the BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team said.

**PIMEC**, short for Pakistan International Maritime Expo and Conference, is an initiative of the Pakistan Navy and is organized by the Ministry of Maritime Affairs with an aim to "jump start development in the maritime sector." It's scheduled to be held from February 10-12, 2023.

The Canadian cybersecurity company said the attacks are designed to target marine-related entities and the event's visitors by tricking the message recipients into opening the seemingly harmless Microsoft Word document.

Once the document is launched, a method called remote template injection is employed to fetch the next-stage payload from an actor-controlled server that's configured to return the artifact only if the request is sent from an IP address located in Pakistan.

BlackBerry said it found the server to be hosting two ZIP archive files sans any password protections, one of which includes a Windows executable (updates.exe) that functions as a covert spying tool capable of bypassing sandboxes and virtual machines.

What's more, the contents of the binary are encrypted with the XOR encryption algorithm, where the XOR key is "penguin." The HTTP response containing the backdoor also comes with the name parameter in the Content-Disposition response header set to "getlatestnews."

The name NewsPenguin is a reference to the uncommon XOR key and the name parameter, with BlackBerry finding no tactical overlaps that connect the malware to any currently-known threat actor or group.

An analysis of the domain hosting the payloads shows that it has been registered since June 30, 2022, indicating some level of advance planning for the campaign while simultaneously taking steps to iterate its toolset.

"As the target is an event run by the Pakistan Navy, it implies that the threat actor is actively targeting government organizations, rather than this being a financially motivated attack," BlackBerry said.

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NewsPenguin Threat Actor Emerges with Malicious Campaign Targeting Pakistani Entities

The Gootkit malware is prominently going after healthcare and finance organizations in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, according to new findings from Cybereason.
The cybersecurity firm said it investigated a Gootkit incident in December 2022 that adopted a new method of deployment, with the actors abusing the foothold to deliver Cobalt Strike and SystemBC for post-exploitation.
"The threat actor

Threat Intelligence / Malware

The Gootkit malware is prominently going after healthcare and finance organizations in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, according to new findings from Cybereason.

The cybersecurity firm said it investigated a Gootkit incident in December 2022 that adopted a new method of deployment, with the actors abusing the foothold to deliver Cobalt Strike and SystemBC for post-exploitation.

"The threat actor displayed fast-moving behaviors, quickly heading to control the network it infected, and getting elevated privileges in less than 4 hours," Cybereason said in an analysis published February 8, 2023.

Gootkit, also called Gootloader, is exclusively attributed to a threat actor tracked by Mandiant as UNC2565. Starting its life in 2014 as a banking trojan, the malware has since morphed into a loader capable of delivering next-stage payloads.

The shift in tactics was first uncovered by Sophos in March 2021. Gootloader takes the form of heavily-obfuscated JavaScript files that are served through compromised WordPress sites ranked higher in search engine results through poisoning techniques.

The attack chain relies on luring victims searching for agreements and contracts on DuckDuckGo and Google to the booby-trapped web page, ultimately leading to the deployment of Gootloader.

The latest wave is also notable for concealing the malicious code within legitimate JavaScript libraries such as jQuery, Chroma.js, Sizzle.js, and Underscore.js, which is then used to spawn a secondary 40 MB JavaScript payload that establishes persistence and launches the malware.

In the incident examined by Cybereason, the Gootloader infection is said to have paved the way for Cobalt Strike and SystemBC to conduct lateral movement and possible data exfiltration. The attack was ultimately foiled.

The disclosure comes amid the ongoing trend of abusing Google Ads by malware operators as an intrusion vector to distribute a variety of malware such as FormBook, IcedID, RedLine, Rhadamanthys, and Vidar.

The evolution of Gootloader into a sophisticated loader is further reflective of how threat actors are constantly seeking new targets and methods to maximize their profits by pivoting to a malware-as-a-service (MaaS) model and selling that access to other criminals.

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Gootkit Malware Adopts New Tactics to Attack Healthcare and Finance Firms

By Habiba Rashid
Has your Tor browser been slow for the past few months? Well, you are not alone; the ongoing DDoS attacks on the Tor network are keeping it slow worldwide.
This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Tor Network Hit By a Series of Ongoing DDoS Attacks

The Tor Project revealed that its network has been suffering from “several different types of ongoing DDoS attacks (Distributed Denial of Service attacks) for at least seven months.

For Tor Browser users who have been wondering why the onion has been having network connectivity and performance issues lately, you are not alone; many others have had problems with the sites loading altogether. 

The Tor Project’s Executive Director, Isabela Dias Fernandes, reported on Tuesday that the network has been targeted by a wave of DDoS attacks (Distributed Denial of Service attacks) for at least the past seven months.

“At some points, the attacks impacted the network severely enough that users could not load pages or access onion services,” Fernandes said on Tuesday.

“We have been working hard to mitigate the impacts and defend the network from these attacks. The methods and targets of these attacks have changed over time and we are adapting as these attacks continue.”

Fernandes also promises that the Tor team will keep tweaking and improving the network defences to counter the ongoing issue. However, they have not yet discovered the goal of these attacks or the identity of the attackers behind them. The Tor Network team will also be expanded to include two new members focusing on .onion service development.

“To clarify, our services have not been down, but on occasion slow for some users, and it is important to note that the user experience is affected by a variety of factors, including what onion services are being used, or which relays get picked when they build a circuit through Tor.”

**_Quick FAQs_****What is Tor Browser?**

Tor Browser or “The Onion Router,” is a free, open-source web browser that allows users to browse the internet anonymously. It was originally developed for US Naval Intelligence in the mid-1990s and was released into the public domain in October 2002.

It is worth noting that the Tor browser utilizes multi-layered encryption of data packets, making it difficult, but not impossible, for anyone to track or monitor user activity on the internet.

The core concept behind Tor is that it creates a network of nodes with each layer acting as an encrypted tunnel so that when a user sends out information, they are virtually untraceable. With every node encrypted; no one can trace where the data originated from or who may have accessed it during transmission. As such, this makes Tor ideal for those looking to keep their online activities private and secure especially journalists and whistleblowers.

**What is a DDoS Attack?**

A DDoS attack stands for Distributed Denial-of-Service attack. It is a type of cyberattack that uses multiple compromised Internet of Things (IoT) or smart devices including computers, routers, cameras, etc. to create a botnet and send massive amounts of traffic to a single targeted server or website to overwhelm it and make it inaccessible for regular users.

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I’m a student and cybersecurity writer. On a random Sunday, I am likely to be figuring out life and reading Kafka.

Tor Network Hit By a Series of Ongoing DDoS Attacks

The malware has affected thousands of VMware ESXi hypervisors in the last few days.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released a recovery script for victims of the ESXiArgs ransomware variant that affected thousands of organizations worldwide this week.

CISA's ESXiArgs-Recover tool is available for free on GitHub and organizations can use it to attempt the recovery of configuration files on vulnerable VMware ESXi servers that the ransomware variant might have encrypted. Some organizations that used the tool have successfully recovered their encrypted files without having to pay a ransom, the agency noted.

However, any cybersecurity team that plans to use the tool should first make sure they understand how it works before attempting to recover files that EXSIArgs might have encrypted, CISA cautioned. "CISA recommends organizations impacted by ESXiArgs evaluate the script and guidance provided in the accompanying README file to determine if it is \[a\] fit," for their environments, it noted.

ESXiArgs is a ransomware variant that France's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) first spotted Feb. 3 targeting VMware ESXi hypervisors worldwide. The malware exploits a 2-year old — and long-patched — remote code execution vulnerability (CVE-2021-21974) in Open Service Location Protocol (OpenSLP), an ESXi service for resolving network addresses.

**What is ESXiArgs?**

ESXiArgs has already infected more than 3,000 unpatched servers in the US, Canada, and multiple other countries. Victims have reported receiving a ransom demand of around 2 Bitcoin (or around $22,800 at press time) for the decryption key. Affected organizations have also reported the threat actor behind the campaign warning them to pay up within three days or risk having their sensitive information released publicly.

Security researchers that have analyzed ESXiArgs describe the malware's encryption process as specifically targeting virtual machine files so as to render the system unusable. In an alert earlier this week, Rapid 7 reported the malware was trying to shut down virtual machines by killing a specific process in the virtual machine kernel that handles I/O commands. In some cases, though, the malware was only partially successful in encrypting files and gave victims a chance to recover data, according to Rapid7.

In a Feb. 8 update, Rapid7 said its threat intelligence shows that multiple ransomware groups, in addition to the operator of ESXiArg, are targeting CVE-2021-21974 and other VMware ESXi vulnerabilities.

**Recovery Tool Based on Published Information**

CISA's recovery script is based on the work of two security researchers — Enes Sonmez and Ahmet Aykac — who showed how victims of ESXiArgs could reconstruct virtual machine metadata from disks that the ransomware might have failed to encrypt.

"This script does not seek to delete the encrypted config files, but instead seeks to create new config files that enable access to the VMs," CISA said. "While CISA works to ensure that scripts like this one are safe and effective, this script is delivered without warranty, either implicit or explicit."

VMware itself has urged organizations to implement the patch it issued two years ago for the flaw that ESXiArgs is exploiting. As a temporary measure, organizations that have not patched the flaw should disable ESXi's service location protocol (SLP) to mitigate the risk of attack via ESXiArgs, VMware said. Another measure: Disable port 427 (the one SLP uses), where possible, Singapore's SingCERT advised in a notice.

CISA Releases Recovery Script for Victims of ESXiArgs Ransomware

Apps like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Discord are a hotbed of cybercriminal communication and scams.

This week, the Dutch national police shut down the criminal messaging service Exclu in conjunction with a sweeping crackdown that included 79 searches and 42 arrests in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. The shutdown highlights the efforts authorities are putting into disrupting the use of messaging apps in the cybercriminal ecosystem. This particular service was unique in that it was exclusively the domain of cybercriminals and drug dealers, but it offers a glimpse into the evolving communication methods of the cybercrime in 2023.

Over the last year, experts have increasingly found that cybercriminals are moving away from Dark Web forums in favor of messaging apps and encrypted communications channels. And more broadly, security analysts and researchers have released details showing how legitimate platforms like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Discord are becoming a hotbed of criminal activity — not only for cybercriminal communications but also for a wide range of scams and exploit campaigns.

**Exclu's Demise**

According to Dutch authorities, the action against Exclu, its creators, and its users was the culmination of an investigation that took nearly two years. The authorities estimated the app had about 3,000 users, those who utilized Exclu on smartphones through a licensing scheme for about €800 (approximately US $857) every six months. In exchange, they got access to a highly secure, encrypted platform that enabled them to privately exchange messages, photos, notes, chats, and other information to support their criminal activity.

Police in the Netherlands said they worked closely with different agencies across Europe, including Eurojust, Europol, and police forces in Italy, Sweden, France, and Germany. Dutch authorities particularly thanked the German Landeskriminalamt (LKA) Rheinland-Pfalz for its early investigations in June 2020 that first brought Exclu to their attention and provided key evidence for investigation. They say the longtime operation was able to crack Exclu using both hacking methods and traditional police investigative work.

The crackdown follows relatively closely on the heels of similar shutdowns of services like Sky ECC and EncroChat.

**The Messaging App Migration**

Many cybercriminals aren't resorting to private criminal messaging networks Exclu when they can just as easily (and cheaply) use and abuse legitimate messaging apps like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Discord.

Just last week, analysts with threat intelligence firm Flare ranked Telegram as one of the top illicit sources to monitor for cybercriminal activity in 2023. They report that cybercriminals are starting to utilize Telegram Groups as an extension of the reach of Dark Web forums for its anonymity and encrypted communications.

"Telegram has no traditional admins monitoring its groups and one-to-one chats, which is attractive for anonymity. Threat actors can also hide their phone numbers on the service," according to Flare's analysis in a recent blog post. "Telegram offers end-to-end encryption for messages by default, which helps to avoid potential man-in-the-middle attacks that can snoop on messages in transit. Dark Web forums and marketplaces also have an encryption option but threat actors need to use something like Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) to ensure encryption, which is less convenient."

This echoes similar research out last summer by Intel 471, which noted that the cybercriminal groups it was observing were leaning toward Telegram as the preferred method of anonymous communication compared to in-forum messaging services.

"Of the cybercriminal groups Intel 471 has observed, Telegram is considered the preferred method of anonymous communication as opposed to in-forum messaging services monitored by administrators. Telegram provides actors with near real-time, encrypted communication if both parties are online simultaneously, whereas in-forum messaging requires waiting for unencrypted mail notifications," Intel471's researchers wrote. "This lag time, along with other security risks associated with forum communications, regularly encourage actors to provide other contact details in forum advertisements, such as email addresses and Telegram IDs."

This finding came directly on the heels of another one from these researchers, which pointed out that Telegram and Discord aren't just for communiques — they're also being hijacked to launch an array of cyberattacks. More recently, KELA researchers reported that Telegram in particular is being used to sell and leak stolen data, use it as a channel for selling other illegal products, publicize information about their attacks, and build bots to bolster their infrastructure that launches attacks and exfiltrates data.

The Telegram bot problem has particularly been growing in its profile on security analyst radars.

"Telegram bots have become a popular choice for threat actors as they are a low-cost or free, single-pane-of-glass solution," says Joe Gallop, intelligence analysis manager at Cofense, who points to his firm's recent report that noted that the use of Telegram bots as exfiltration destinations for phished information exploded by more than 800% between 2021 and 2022. "Telegram bots are easy to set up in private and group chats, are compatible with a wide range of programming languages, and are easy to integrate into malicious media such as malware or credential phishing kits."

Exclu Shutdown Underscores Outsized Role Messaging Apps Play in Cybercrime

Latest release gives small and mid-sized enterprises AI-driven analysis tools and unified visibility across IT environments for stronger ransomware protection.

**SAN FRANCISCO****,** **Feb. 8, 2023** **/PRNewswire/ —** ActZero®, a leading cybersecurity provider for small and mid-sized enterprises, announced the release of its next-generation Managed Detection and Response (MDR) platform. The ActZero MDR platform leverages its defense ingenuity and precision AI-detection to give customers an industry-leading ransomware block rate of 90 percent. Within this initial launch, security teams will gain unified real-time visibility across their environment with correlated threat insights, AI-driven tools to surface information faster for better decision making, and continuous protection against emerging ransomware threats.

Ransomware attacks are expected to cost businesses $30 billion in damages worldwide by this year. The speed and sophistication of these attacks are increasing, with adversaries now able to achieve breakout in under 43 minutes on average. ActZero successfully contains and eradicates ransomware threats within 17 minutes, compared to 98 minutes, based on assessments by an independent third-party evaluation platform. Speed to defend against a cyber threat is critical to saving a company's data, reputation, and business.

"Relying on a cybersecurity partner to protect against threats takes trust. With attackers frequently retooling to evade defenses, it's not enough to verify once; you need to continuously verify that systems are properly defended to build that trust. We thrive on that accountability," said ActZero President and Chief Revenue Officer Chris Finan. "Today, we are excited to announce the newest release of the ActZero MDR platform, making it easier for customers to continuously measure outcomes and interface seamlessly with our expert analysts. When every second counts, you need to have complete trust that your security partner will stop the threats to your business."

The newly designed ActZero MDR platform dashboard gives customers a real-time and holistic picture of their IT ecosystem and users. Critical metrics such as the ransomware block rate and average mean-time-to-first-response rate, along with real-time reporting provide the actionable intelligence for validating the cybersecurity team investment and continuous efforts to improve security.

"Businesses today need to operate at machine-speed to stop advanced cyber threats, but IT leaders and security teams also need complete visibility of their environment, which legacy SIEM and MDR approaches fail to deliver," said ActZero Chief Security Officer Adam Mansour. "We designed this new generation of our platform to give IT security teams the benefits of our market-leading, AI-driven detection, and response with purpose-built visibility and investigative tooling to empower them with complete control."

**About ActZero**

ActZero is a Gartner-recognized provider of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services that delivers a powerful and affordable cybersecurity service to protect small and mid-sized enterprises against ransomware attacks. By  continuously testing defenses against the latest attack techniques and variants, ActZero ensures AI-detections and human threat hunters quickly stop threats. The company brings deep roots and expertise in cybersecurity to deliver measurable ransomware defense, reducing false alerts and responding quickly on a customer's behalf. Combined with exceptional service, ActZero empowers businesses with confidence that the company and customers are protected.

For more information on ActZero, please visit actzero.com.

SOURCE ActZero

ActZero Unveils Next-Generation MDR Platform

Skybox closes $50 million in financing to drive growth of its SaaS-based security platform.

**SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 8, 2023–** Skybox Security, a global leader in Security Policy and Vulnerability Management, today announced the appointment of Mordecai (Mo) Rosen as Chief Executive Officer, and the closing of $50 million in financing from CVC Growth Funds, Pantheon, and J.P. Morgan. Mr. Rosen is a seasoned security technology executive with over 25 years of experience and will focus on driving company growth and accelerating the adoption of the industry’s first Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution for Security Policy and Vulnerability Management.  

“CVC is incredibly pleased to bring on Mo as the new CEO of Skybox and to continue our long-standing financial support of the company. Skybox is the cornerstone of the security infrastructure of hundreds of the largest enterprises around the globe. With its new SaaS platform, Skybox Cloud, the company is well positioned for significant market growth,” said Jason Glass, Partner at CVC. “Mo brings a wealth of knowledge and a track record of success in leading cybersecurity and SaaS companies, and we have every confidence that he will lead Skybox to its next level of long-term growth and profitability.” 

Before joining Skybox, Mr. Rosen was the President and CEO of Digital Guardian, a data loss prevention software company, where he significantly grew recurring revenue while simultaneously leading the organization to profitability. Before Digital Guardian, he served as the Corporate Senior Vice President and General Manager for Security at CA Technologies, now a Broadcom company.  

“I was drawn to Skybox by its disruptive technology platform, blue chip customer base, and seasoned cybersecurity team,” said Mr. Rosen. “With our first to market SaaS offering, Skybox Cloud, we are well positioned to disrupt both the Security Policy and Vulnerability Management markets with a single integrated SaaS platform. I am thrilled to join Skybox at this exciting inflection point and lead the company to its next level of growth.” 

To learn more about Skybox Security, visit https://www.skyboxsecurity.com/.  

**About Skybox Security**

Over 500 of the largest and most security-conscious enterprises in the world rely on Skybox for the insights and assurance required to stay ahead of dynamically changing attack surfaces. Our SaaS-based Security Posture Management Platform delivers complete visibility, analytics, and automation to quickly map, prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities across your organization. The vendor-agnostic solution intelligently optimizes security policies, actions, and change processes across all corporate networks and cloud environments. With Skybox, security teams can now focus on the most strategic business initiatives while ensuring enterprises remain protected.

Skybox Security Appoints Cybersecurity Veteran Mordecai Rosen as CEO

**SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 8, 2023 --** Corelight, the leader in open network detection and response (NDR), today announced it has expanded its partnership with CrowdStrike, a leader in cloud-delivered protection of endpoints, cloud workloads, identity and data. Under the agreement, CrowdStrike will have the ability to deploy Corelight NDR technology in customer engagements when delivering Incident Response, Compromise Assessment, and Network Security Monitoring services.

"We are honored to enter into this expanded partnership with CrowdStrike, a brand that's trusted and respected throughout the security space," said Brian Dye, CEO of Corelight. "We share a passion for using evidence to help customers find and disrupt advanced attacks, and we are excited about delivering this benefit to customers."

CrowdStrike Services will have the ability to leverage Corelight's NDR solution to enhance visibility, accelerate investigations, expand threat hunting, and understand the mechanism of advanced attacks across the full spectrum of endpoints, cloud platforms and the network – including unmanaged devices.

CrowdStrike Services delivers industry-leading incident response, technical assessments, training, and advisory services that help organizations prepare to defend against advanced threats, respond to widespread attacks, and enhance cybersecurity practices and controls. Harnessing the power of the CrowdStrike Security Cloud and the CrowdStrike Falcon platform, Services help protect critical areas of enterprise risk and hunt for threats using adversary-focused cyber threat intelligence to identify, track and prevent attacks from impacting our customer's business and brand.

"Corelight is a natural and highly complementary technology partner," said Thomas Etheridge, chief global professional services officer at CrowdStrike. "Better security outcomes require world-class and timely data. Because Corelight also seamlessly integrates with a range of CrowdStrike products, including CrowdStrike Falcon XDR and CrowdStrike Falcon LogScale, our mutual customers can hunt for unknown attacks, close visibility gaps, and even disrupt future threats faster by seeing everything that matters on the network – including unmanaged endpoints and IoT devices."

The agreement is the latest evidence of ongoing collaboration between the two companies: CrowdStrike's Falcon Fund is an investor in Corelight, and CrowdStrike was recently named Corelight's Apex Awards Alliance Partner of the Year for Innovation.

**About Corelight**

Corelight transforms network and cloud activity into evidence that security teams use to proactively hunt for threats, accelerate response to incidents, gain complete network visibility and create powerful analytics. Corelight's global customers include Fortune 500 companies, major government agencies, and large universities. Based in San Francisco, Corelight is an open-core security company founded by the creators of Zeek®, the widely-used network security technology. For more information, visit https://corelight.com or follow @corelight\_inc.

Corelight Expands Partnership With CrowdStrike to Provide Network Detection and Response Technology for CrowdStrike Services

Omdia has learned that Gigamon sold its ThreatInsight NDR business to Fortinet for approximately $31 million. The deal highlights what may be a pivot point for the NDR market.

Gigamon has exited the network detection and response (NDR) business, selling its NDR solution to a former competitor, Omdia has learned.

The Santa Clara, California-based network visibility and IT observability vendor quietly sold its ThreatInsight NDR business to Fortinet at the end of last year. Omdia research indicates the acquisition price was approximately $31 million.

The sale also encompassed the staff dedicated to ThreatInsight, including Gigamon’s former threat intelligence group. Omdia research indicates that approximately 30 to 50 Gigamon employees moved to Fortinet in the transaction.

**Gigamon Shifts to NDR Enabler**

Gigamon entered the NDR market in 2018 when it acquired NDR startup Icebrg. Seen at the time as a strong complement to its portfolio of network visibility solutions, which includes network traffic decryption, ThreatInsight never lived up to Gigamon's commercial expectations, in part because enterprise buying centers for visibility and observability tend to differ from those related to threat detection, investigation, and response (TDIR).

One of the difficulties of selling point products is that they tend to have very specific buying centers. This is highlighted by the position that Gigamon found itself in with NDR. While it continues to have success selling its broader portfolio by targeting CISOs and security architecture teams, NDR sales are typically evaluated and funded within incident response groups, which require a different sales motion.

While security remains an important use case for Gigamon’s visibility portfolio generally, Gigamon increasingly saw itself as better positioned as an ecosystem enabler of NDR solutions through partnership with leading NDR vendors.

By eliminating any competitive conflicts, the deal should immediately make Gigamon a more attractive partner with a variety of NDR vendors with which it formerly competed. Additionally, the company can re-emphasize its renewed focus on network and hybrid cloud observability, this following its recent pivot to relabel its core platform as a Deep Observability Pipeline solution.

**Fortinet Doubles Down on NDR**

Fortinet will rebrand the ThreatInsight technology as FortiNDR Cloud and sell it as a cloud-based addition to its existing on-premises FortiNDR product (formerly known as FortiAI).

Fortinet introduced FortiAI in 2020 as an AI/ML appliance for network detection and response. The company has seen strong demand for NDR as customers shift focus to what Fortinet calls advanced and early detection. The growing adoption of a zero-trust philosophy is also driving additional interest as organizations treat internal east-west traffic with increased scrutiny.

**NDR Market Evolution**

The move also highlights the NDR market’s continuing evolution. As enterprises increasingly seek to unify their TDIR product architectures, interest is growing in NDR solutions that can not only detect and respond to network-specific threats but can also provide insight to and integration with broader solution sets, such as XDR and other security operations platforms.

This evolution is playing out in several ways. For example, NDR vendors are continuing to expand their functional footprint to include additional network security capabilities, such as a broader set of detection capabilities. Of course, the flip side to that trend is network security appliance vendors potentially adding NDR as an additional feature.

Fortinet is a case in point. While FortiNDR Cloud will be available as a stand-alone product, and one that requires no Fortinet hardware, NDR functionality is sure to find its way into broader network security solutions such as next-generation firewalls (NGFWs). This trend will shift the competitive landscape in NDR, which is currently dominated by pure plays such as Darktrace, ExtraHop, and Vectra.

NDR solutions are also increasingly expected to integrate across emerging open XDR ecosystems. This, of course, requires significant investment as the number of integration requests can be large, even if initially just focusing on EDR vendors. Omdia believes success in NDR would have required a significant new investment from Gigamon.

Ironically, given the increased partnership opportunities, Omdia believes this divestiture might well grow Gigamon’s overall share of security dollars, as security teams are either stakeholders or outright buyers of the network observability capabilities that Gigamon offers. More broadly, the company is betting that customers will be shopping for a comprehensive observability platform across hybrid environments.

Omdia's most recent global NDR market outlook indicates the NDR market is worth $0.95 billion as of the end of 2021 and is expected to grow to $1.98 billion by the end of 2027. However, Omdia forecasts that growth in the stand-alone NDR market will slow in 2023 due to macroeconomic headwinds but will rebound and continue to show reasonable growth for the foreseeable future. That said, consolidation of detection and response functionality across digital domains is an important trend.

More broadly, and as importantly, security buyers are looking to consolidate security functionality from a smaller group of larger providers. While best-of-breed security point products will never disappear, suite vendors such as Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, and Cisco, among others, are well positioned for current vendor consolidation.

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