Beyond Firewalls: Why Your Business Needs NDR

For years, firewalls have been the cornerstone of cybersecurity for businesses. By monitoring and controlling incoming and outgoing network traffic, firewalls provide a critical frontline defense against unauthorized access attempts and potential threats.

Nevertheless, firewalls alone are no longer sufficient protection. Skilled attackers can often bypass firewalls through methods like exploiting software vulnerabilities, using stolen credentials, or social engineering tactics like phishing.

This is why many organizations are adopting a more comprehensive, proactive approach by implementing network detection and response (NDR) solutions alongside firewalls and other security tools.

What is NDR?

Network detection and response monitors all traffic across your complete network infrastructure in search of anomalies or indications of malicious behavior, potential intrusions, insider threats, and more.

According to the experts at Hillstone Networks, advanced NDR solutions use techniques like machine learning, behavioral analytics, SSL/TLS inspection, and sand-boxing to provide deep visibility while rapidly detecting threats that may evade traditional defenses.

Rather than simply blocking or allowing traffic based on basic rules like firewalls, NDR focuses on enhanced threat detection, investigation, and automated response capabilities across encrypted and clear-text traffic.

Benefits of NDR

Implementing a robust network detection and response solution provides several key advantages over relying on firewalls alone:

• Identifies Threats Across Entire Network: NDR provides comprehensive visibility into encrypted and clear-text network traffic, user activity and cloud services. 
• Uses Advanced Behavioral Analytics: Establishing baselines of normal behaviors means NDR quickly detects anomalies and indicators of compromise through techniques like machine learning and artificial intelligence. 
• Prioritized Threat Intelligence: NDR consolidates and prioritizes real-time alert data, enabling faster investigation and informed decision-making during potential incidents.
• Accelerated Threat Response: With comprehensive context and evidence readily available, NDR allows organizations to rapidly initiate mitigation actions before threats escalate through automated response playbooks.
• Integration with Other Security Tools: NDR platforms collect and correlate security data from various sources like EDR, SIEM, and firewalls for unified visibility and analysis.

In essence, NDR acts as an advanced threat hunting solution; proactively and continuously monitoring your network for any malicious activity while providing quick, decisive response capabilities.

Assessing Your NDR Needs

While highly beneficial, NDR solutions require properly assessing your organization’s unique risk profile and security requirements. Factors to consider include:

• Size and complexity of network infrastructure.
• Regulatory compliance needs in your specific industry.
• Existing security stack and staffing resources.
• Frequency and sophistication of threats faced.
• Amount of encrypted traffic on your networks.

Based on this assessment, you can determine ideal NDR capabilities and whether managed services, cloud-based or on-premises deployments make the most sense.

Fostering Stronger Overall Security

Network detection and response should be viewed as a strategic complement to firewalls, endpoint security, and other defensive layers rather than a complete replacement.

NDR provides an essential set of detection, investigation, and response functions, but works most effectively when integrated into a broader, unified cybersecurity architecture.

Conclusion

Cyber threats are becoming increasingly advanced and difficult to detect through legacy perimeter-focused security measures alone. Investing in purpose-built network detection and response solutions means your business gains the critical visibility, advanced analytics, and rapid response capabilities necessary to stay ahead of threats and protect critical assets and data.

While adopting NDR requires commitment when it comes to budgets and resources, the potential costs of inaction are far greater. The damages from successful cyberattacks in terms of downtime, recovery efforts, regulatory fines, legal battles, and reputational harm can easily bankrupt organizations – especially smaller businesses.

Ensuring resilient cybersecurity through NDR and other modern defensive technologies isn’t just a smart investment, it’s an essential requirement for any organization aiming to maintain integrity, continuity and profitability in our high-risk digital future.