A great way to mitigate the effects of a cyber incident is to analyze attack patterns. This requires analysts to build a pattern up from a single security event, such as a command execution or malicious file download, into a collection of data that can help them trace and defend against an attack.

To accomplish this level of analysis, security professionals need security information and event management (SIEM) tools integrated with cognitive systems. Some situations even require analysts to have direct access to affected endpoints to properly examine an incident, but with this type of access often comes a separate set of consequences.

The Implications of Remote Control

During the remediation phase, analysts must have a full view of the environment to discover additional targets on their network that could potentially be compromised. However, it can be cost prohibitive and ineffective to communicate these threats by telephone or to establish a remote control session to access targeted devices. This operation can also be interrupted if analysts fail to consider the architectural constraints of the device.

The process of accessing devices remotely can result in violations of security policies if not properly orchestrated with incident response and change management processes. For this reason, security leaders need to make their environments secure by design. That means building security into the infrastructure from the ground up so analysts can immediately control devices remotely when an incident strikes.

The principle of secure by design requires developers to consider the peculiarity of complex networks when they build their security infrastructure. Ideally, products are integrated in such a way that supports change management policies. Otherwise, transferring files could create further problems, generate misconfigurations and impede the change management process.

Attack Patterns Are Always Shifting

Cybercriminals constantly shift their strategies and techniques to keep security professionals guessing. Analysts can only be sure of one thing: Their organization will be attacked. By designing the security infrastructure to recognize dynamic attack patterns, security teams can create more flexibility to take over endpoints remotely without disrupting change management procedures or violating policies.