Until recently, most enterprises have been viewing cyber-attacks as they would view industrial fires. They have been believing that with enough preventive measures in place, no cyberthreat -- existing or emerging -- would harm their enterprise. But nothing could be further from the truth. Cyber-attacks are more like earthquakes. There is no guaranteed way to prevent them. If you have an enterprise that uses data and digital communications, cyber threats are inevitable. And what do you do when you live in an earthquake-prone zone? You don’t just focus on prevention. You invest in the ability to sense emerging earthquakes and devise strategies to respond when the inevitable happens. Similarly, with cyberthreats becoming an inherent risk to running a digital enterprise, the focus should be as much on threat detection and response as it is on threat prevention. And more and more cybersecurity leaders are realizing this.

Why there is a growing need for threat detection and response

A recent survey of CISOs from across the world revealed that a considerable number of enterprises feel they are ill-equipped to face emerging cybersecurity threats. Around a quarter of CISOs surveyed believed that cyber attackers are outpacing their enterprises’ ability to keep up. It comes as no surprise then, that CISOs are preferring to raise their budget for threat detection and response instead of investing in threat prevention systems.

That’s because with cyber threats evolving at a pace far greater than enterprise cybersecurity measures, most prevention systems, no matter how expensive or ‘advanced’, won’t guarantee protection. However, it is not to say that investment in threat prevention is entirely futile. Just because you install security cameras doesn’t mean you can tear down your fences. Similarly, businesses should keep up their efforts to prevent cyber threats using preventive measures like next-generation security firewalls. They must use data loss prevention tools to ensure that no bit of business-critical data leaves their organization and falls in the wrong hands. In fact, effective threat detection and response is built on the foundation of state-of-the-art threat prevention systems.

In addition to having robust threat prevention mechanisms, they should invest in tools that also have the capability to detect and analyze new threats. This way, they will be able to respond to these threats in a more effective way. Hackers and cybercriminals are constantly developing increasingly sophisticated malware programs that evade most antivirus and anti-malware systems and gain entry into enterprise networks. The increasing number of zero-day threats are rendering even the most advanced threat prevention systems ineffective. And as time passes, the sophistication and efficacy of malware and zero-day threats will only grow. They will need more tools that can help them detect suspicious programs and fewer tools focusing solely on threat prevention. But what does a threat detection system look like? And how does it help?

What threat detection and response systems look like

For all-round protection from emerging threats, you should invest in advanced cybersecurity solutions that offer deep visibility into your enterprise network in addition to ensuring threat prevention. Using tools that offer complete visibility into every digital asset you own -- from your data and applications to your devices and communication channels -- will enable your cybersecurity team to keep track of suspicious programs and users and identify potential threats.

Multilayer visibility enables you to understand the context of every bit of communication that occurs within your enterprise network. A deep inspection capability like this not only gives you network-related data such as sender and receiver details and their IP addresses but also the content of emails, chats, and other kinds of communications. An advanced threat detection and response system that comes with deep inspection capability can enable you to monitor network activity in a detailed manner. These tools also come with advanced sandboxing capabilities that can be used to run suspicious programs in a virtual environment isolated from the rest of your enterprise network. As a result, even if malware programs are activated, they cannot harm your critical data and digital assets. And your cybersecurity team can study these threats to devise apt countermeasures and prevent future threats of the same kind. As a result, you can keep up with evolving cyber-attacks.

A Next-Generation Firewall Solution by GajShield can prove to be the ultimate threat detection and response tool. It can not only provide you with protection from common threats like spam, malware, and adware but also protect you from new threats that most existing firewall solutions may miss. These systems analyze normal network behavior and constantly watch out for suspicious network activity.

When legitimate users perform actions compliant with standard practice and policies, these systems make it easier for the users to access the data and applications they need to expedite processes. However, whenever an anomaly occurs -- say, communication between two applications that are irrelevant to each other -- the system notifies your cybersecurity team. Since such firewalls operate in a  highly context-based manner, they do not report too many false positives and only notify users when something truly out of the ordinary happens. As a result, your cybersecurity team can focus on responding to critical security-related emergencies instead of wasting their time attending to false positives.

Using next-generation firewalls with contextual intelligence can ensure that your threat detection and response capabilities keep up with evolving cyber threats. The best part about such systems is they are minimally obtrusive to your regular enterprise operations while offering an unparalleled level of security and visibility. To top it all off, these tools also guarantee the prevention of every kind of existing cyber threat. Hence, you can offer your users a fully carefree network experience.