Ep. 62 Advances in Threat Detection and Response

April 11, 2023

Out of all the phrases that technology has generated in the past ten years, I think I like the phrase, “cloud washing” the most. The concept is that a traditional company would promote itself as always being cloud native. Kind of like being a Monday morning quarterback.

In 2023, the variation on that theme is “Artificial Intelligence washing.” Now that AI is a trending phrase you can see technology websites suddenly claiming the long history they have with artificial intelligence, or, what may be called, “artificial intelligence washing.”

This brings us to today’s interview with Chris Howard from Vectra. The company has been knee-deep in Artificial Intelligence since 2010. As Chris explains, they have honed that knowledge to be able to apply it to the world of cybersecurity.

During the interview, Chris explains how Vectra deals with an insider threat. They have focused on techniques to understand how an insider moves within a network. The overall approach to this is what Vectra calls “Attack Signal Intelligence.”

"what we do is we want to think like an attacker, because they if you think like an attacker, then you know how to catch the attacker"

Chris Howard, Vectra AI Tweet

Without divulging proprietary information, Vectra has proven itself to be able to isolate and respond to a variety of malicious actors. Essentially, they have trained AI to think like an attacker and give the appropriate defensive response.

Chris describes a case study where a person was let into the network with appropriate credentials as a test to see Vectra’s capabilities. Merely by watching behavior, the algorithms from Vectra were able to isolate the malicious actor.

Realistically, attacks are so prevalent that defense is almost impossible for a human without an automated tool. The safety provided by Vectra doesn’t stop with the installation of the Vectra platform. It has been designed to continuously learn new threats and respond accordingly.

Listen to the interview to gain a better understanding of an advanced way to handle cyber threats.

If you enjoyed this article, you may want to listen to Ep. 56 Modern Databases, Feds, Flexibility