E-Business
Check Point Software Launches Security Operations Solutions with Prevention-First Approach
Check Point® Software Technologies, a leading provider of cyber security solutions globally, has announced the launch of Check Point Horizon – the industry-leading prevention-focused suite of security operations solutions and services that combines proactive management solutions for Managed Prevention and Response (MDR/MPR), Extended Prevention and Response (XDR/XPR) and Events.
All powered at the click of a button and supported by the industry’s top analysts, research experts and innovative AI technology.
The cyber threat landscape has never been more severe. Check Point’s Mid-Year Report recently revealed a 42% global increase in cyberattacks and ransomware is now the number one threat to businesses.
Attacks are increasing all the time as security teams struggle to shut down breaches before damage spreads due to the distraction of endless alerts and false positives across multiple siloed tools and a narrow attack vector view that lacks context.
The problem is made worse by a lack of cyber experience and the ongoing skills shortage.
Against this backdrop, there is now a critical need for all organizations to have a security operations center (SOC), with 24/7 monitoring, response, and threat hunting capabilities.
However, for the majority, running this kind of operation is too complex and expensive. Also, SOC provision up to now, does not match the scale of the challenge as the industry is only focused on detecting and responding to attacks rather than preventing them.
Craig Robinson, Research Vice President for Security Services at IDC commented: “Many of the existing MDR solutions in the market today simply deal with detection and management of cyber incidents, but actually preventing incidents has largely been missing in the MDR arena, until now.
Check Point Horizon’s strategy of going prevention-first is a game-changing feature addition in the crowded MDR market.”
Dan Wiley, Head of Threat Management and Chief Security Advisor at Check Point Software, said: “The secret sauce to Horizon is in its unique combination of preventative tools, the industry’s top analysts and research experts and innovative AI.
Check Point Horizon is a unified solution across your entire infrastructure that will vastly improve your cyber defenses and prevent attacks from happening, while reducing overheads and TCO.”
He continued: “The strength of any MDR service is in its people, and prevention is in our DNA. With Horizon MDR/MPR, customers benefit from the direct experience of our Incident Response team who handle more than 3,000 incidents per year. If you do not have the resources to run a solid 24/7 SOC, we will do it for you.”
Check Point Horizon brings a prevention-first approach to security operations by providing SOC teams with the tools and services needed to prevent attacks in real-time with fewer resources. It includes:
Check Point Horizon XDR/XPR increases security operations efficiency by quickly detecting, investigating, and automating responses to attacks across the entire IT infrastructure. By leveraging innovative AI technologies and big data threat intelligence, aggregated from hundreds of millions of sensors worldwide, Horizon XDR/XPR identifies threats inside the organization and prevents them from spreading.
Check Point Horizon MDR/MPR is a prevention-first MDR service backed by Check Point´s elite experts who deliver a powerful SOC-as-a-Service.
The Check Point analysts’ monitor the entire security estate 24/7 – no matter the products or solutions in place – utilizing their 25 years’ Incident Response experience to analyze, correlate and understand what’s happening, responding on a customer’s behalf and making recommendations to drive a prevention mindset throughout the entire delivery of the service.
Horizon Events – Horizon Events provides complete event visibility across all Check Point products for efficient monitoring, search, and threat hunting. Designed for security admins and analysts to investigate and troubleshoot all security incidents, with a simple and intuitive SaaS cloud solution, it saves valuable time and eliminates complexity.
Marc Upchurch, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at City and County of San Francisco – Department of Public Health, said: “Being a public health company with limited resources, we must partner with a cybersecurity vendor that has low ongoing costs and good ROI.
Check Point’s commitment to investing in its products and services to provide an integrated prevention-first solution with an easy-to-manage consolidated security platform can be seen in the results we witness in our environment.
“Our small team, combined with Horizon MDR/MPR, allows us to align our cybersecurity goals with patient safety initiatives to provide continuous delivery of services without disruptions 24x7x365 to the people who live in and visit our wonderful city.”
Nigerian Consumer Credit Corporation (CrediCorp), has partnered Fintech Association of Nigeria (FinTechNGR) to drive consumer credit scheme initiative through a robust payment platform that would be provided by members of FinTechNGR.
Speaking at a Social Meet in Lagos, organised by FinTechNGR, with the theme: “Augmenting the Future, AI, Credit and Transformation of Nigerian Finance,” the Chairman, CrediCorp Board of Directors, Aderemi Abdul-Bojela, said members of FinTechNGR would have specific roles to play in the partnership, in the areas of providing robust platform for money transfer, technology evaluation, among others.
“Today, CrediCorp is engaging with members of FinTechNGR in a social interactive gathering to discuss collaboration and support for the growth of Consumer Credit Corporation in Nigeria. We want to interact to understand how technology will drive the crediCorp initiative in Nigeria and also to understand the role that members of FinTechNGR will play in all of these initiatives around CrediCorp,” Abdul-Bojela said.
Describing the partnership as a welcome development that will enhance savings culture among Nigerians, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of FinTechNGR, Dr. Babatunde Obrimah, said: “FinTechNGR is an enabler of technology advancement in Nigeria. We bring the players together to drive technology innovation.
“Our role in the FinTechNGR-CrediCorp partnership is to ensure that our members support the growth of consumer credit in Nigeria, by providing the relevant payment platforms for all financial transactions among the banks who are the lenders, the customers who are the burrowers and the CrediCorp who is the guarantor.”
Speaking about the benefits for Nigerians, Obrimah said the Consumer Credit Corporation in Nigeria would enhance the country’s credit culture and enable Nigerians to save and plan well with their savings. “The initiative will address inflation, help in liquidity flow, build trust in customers’ borrowing, boost credit culture and enhance the culture of savings among Nigerians,” Obrimah said.
Addressing the issue of risk and consumer trust, Abdul-Bojela said the CrediCorp has put measures in place to ensure that the banks that would be involved in lending, would be protected and guaranteed of the repayment of the loans within the CrediCorp ecosystem.
He said there would be an independent management that would ensure that the right technology is put in place to recover all monies.
Kashifu Abdullahi, director general of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), announced plans to integrate digital literacy into Nigeria’s education system, to achieve a 70% literacy rate by 2027 and 95% by 2030.
Kashifu Abdullah, DG, NITDA
The NITDA’s DG made the announcement on Wednesday in Abuja during a media parley.
He stated that in order to include digital literacy in the curriculum at all educational levels, from kindergarten to university, the Agency was collaborating with the Federal Ministry of Education.
Abdullahi, said that this program would equip Nigerians with the digital know-how and abilities they need to succeed in the digital economy.
He emphasized that NITDA would also launch the “Digital Literacy for All Initiative” to educate Nigerians outside the formal education system and provide access to quality digital content.
Nigeria would train over two million young people in in-demand IT skills in order to become significant global outsourcing hub
NITDA is also collaborating with the Defence Headquarters and security agencies to develop digital solutions to address security concerns, including the use of drones, artificial intelligence, and other digital resources to combat banditry, abduction, and terrorism, he said.
According to him, the agency’s draft SRAP 2.0 plan aims to establish Nigeria as a digitally empowered nation, with a focus on innovation, national prosperity, and inclusivity.
The director general of NITDA added that, if successfully implemented, this strategy could propel Nigeria into a new phase of digital empowerment and leadership in the global digital economy.
In 2023, more than 1/5 of cyberattacks persisted for over a month, the annual Kaspersky Incident Response 2023 report has revealed, with trusted relationships emerging as one of the main attack vectors in these prolonged cases.
The report draws on the results of Kaspersky’s cyberattack investigations throughout the year, gathered when supporting organisations sought incident response assistance or when hosting expert events for their internal incident response teams.
Primary reasons of organisations approaching Kaspersky Incident Response team with service requests were encrypted files (32.8% of requests), suspicious activities (31%), data leakage (20%), and also included non-authorised accesses (3%), service unavailability (3%) and money theft (1.6%).
Among initial attack vectors of the investigated incidents were exploiting public facing application (42.4%), compromised accounts and BruteForce attacks (28.8% in total), trusted relationships (6.78%), phishing (5%), insider’s activity (3.4%).
Kaspersky Incident Response 2023 report indicates that long-lasting cyberattacks that persist for more than a month constituted 21.85% of the total, increasing from 2022 by 5.55%.
One notable trend observed in these attacks was the exploitation of trusted relationships as a primary vector. Compromises leveraging trusted relationships have occurred previously, but in 2023 their frequency increased.
As this method of attack enables threat actors to infiltrate multiple victims through a single compromised organisation, investigative teams face several additional challenges. Firstly, initially targeted organisations don’t always recognise the importance of thorough investigations and may be reluctant to cooperate.
Secondly, attacks initiated through trusted relationships often require more time to progress from the initial intrusion to the final incursion phase. Therefore 50% of these attacks lasted more than a month. A similar proportion of attacks exceeding one month were exclusively registered within the insider and phishing vectors.
“Our latest findings underscore the critical role of trust in cyberattacks. In 2023 and for the first time in recent years, attacks through trusted relationships were among the three most used vectors. Half of these incidents were discovered only after a data leak had been found.
“By exploiting trusted relationships, threat actors can prolong attacks and infiltrate networks for extended periods, posing significant risks to organisations. It’s imperative for businesses to remain vigilant and prioritise security measures to safeguard against such sophisticated tactics,” comments Konstantin Sapronov, Head of Global Emergency Response Team at Kaspersky.
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