Unifying security teams in the struggle against cyber threats

Anuj Goel at Cyware explains why cyber-fusion is a highly effective strategy for businesses dealing with a multiplicity of cyber-threats and an ever-increasing set of tools and teams to deal with them

Against the backdrop of an increasingly sophisticated and aggressive threat landscape, combined with the potential threats posed by recent technologies such as generative AI, businesses in all industries have a lot to contend with.

What’s more, overstretched security analysts are bombarded with far too many threats and alerts to address. Countless tools promise to make sense of the noise and help identify real threats. But as enterprises have piled on new layers of security, the sheer number of disparate tools makes the problem worse. Recent estimates suggest that large enterprises average 100+ discreet security tools, many of which do not play nicely together.

Added to this, IT security teams and their counterparts in risk usually work separately – missing the opportunity to combine resources and threat intel. Whilst these teams continuously look for external clues to identify looming threats, the insight as to where the next attack will come from often lies hidden in internal log data.

But wading through millions of data points is not a human-scale problem. Without tools to effectively process, analyse, and prioritise this data, these internal clues often remain undetected, or they are discovered forensically long after attacks occur, and the damage has already been done.

With the substantial number of tools, overlap is inevitable, and adding new tools has diminishing returns. As a result, security professionals need better ways to integrate, connect and orchestrate action across the full range of technologies at their disposal.

The evolution and impact of cyber-fusion

Increasingly, security leaders and their teams are turning to the concept of ‘cyber-fusion’ to deliver the integrated and agile capabilities they need.

Introduced by military intelligence agencies about thirty years ago, cyber-fusion was designed to build collaboration among intelligence communities to obtain an in-depth understanding of the threat landscape. Today, the approach is gaining traction in the cyber-security industry, particularly among large enterprises that are focused on the elimination of silos, enhanced threat visibility, and increased cyber-resilience and collaboration between internal security teams.

Cyber-fusion offers a more proactive approach to threat prediction, detection and response by bridging the gap between multiple teams with an emphasis on integrated intelligence and inter-team collaboration. In practical terms, contemporary cyber-fusion is designed to unify a full spectrum of security functions into a single connected unit with the capability to combine and integrate detection, threat hunting, vulnerability management, SOC, threat intel, incident response, and other teams. 

By taking an integrated and collaborative approach, security teams are much better placed to leverage each other’s specialisation and strengths and deliver better outcomes aligned with their goals.

Improving efficiency and effectiveness with cyber-fusion

Today’s digitally centric organisations struggle with the amount of log data they produce in silos: analysing it all, comprehensively and concurrently, is critical to gaining visibility into their threat landscape so that effective threat responses can be delivered.

Cyber-fusion solves this challenge by sitting at the centre of the security infrastructure, connecting the dots between internal telemetry and external threat intelligence, and driving centralised threat analysis and response. The actionable and contextual data is automatically shared with disparate security technologies and teams for proactive actions, maximising their battle rhythm against threats.

By improving collaboration between disparate security teams and supporting the constant flow of threat intelligence data from various sources, all areas of the security function are more quickly and effectively able to detect, prioritise and respond to incidents, vulnerabilities and other threats. This means they are far better placed to make informed decisions and take necessary actions against existing or new security threats.

Building a unified strategy

Taking this a step further, establishing a virtual cyber-fusion centre (vCFC) combines threat intelligence with various security functions through automation. It supports the constant flow of threat intelligence among different teams and fortifies several security processes, fostering visibility and collaboration across security teams. 

This works in contrast to the situation seen in many organisations where critical information is dispersed across teams and can be challenging to obtain. Instead, cyber-fusion acts as a single source of truth for security decision-makers, putting teams in a much stronger position to evaluate all the critical elements that impact their strategic and tactical approach to threats and vulnerabilities, underpinned by a unified approach.

It also promotes a greater degree of confidence that decisions are being made based on actionable insights backed by the most useful and timely resources and experience.

Clearly, improving the levels of insight and collaboration is becoming increasingly important for organisations facing an array of real-time threats. By bringing together every relevant stakeholder under a common approach and shared set of goals, enterprises can employ cyber-fusion to raise their security game and deliver the levels of protection they need.

Anuj Goel is co-founder and CEO of Cyware

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