Swiftly identifying network issues is crucial for delivering both robust cyber protection and a top-notch application experience to your clients and staff. A fully featured network detection and response (NDR) solution is essential for every IT infrastructure deployment. With an NDR in place, your IT administrators can quickly detect anomalies on the network, from cyberattacks to malfunctioning application servers or network equipment. Rapid detection allows for a fast response, which in turn minimizes the risk from cyberattacks and reduces unplanned downtime caused by other hardware or software issues. 

The Necessity of NDR 

In this article, I’ll focus primarily on how NDR plays a significant part in cyber defense. Most people understand that cyber defense needs multiple layers and solutions deployed across infrastructure at various physical and logical locations. There aren’t any one-size-fits-all solutions that will protect your systems. Organizations need to use multiple cybersecurity solutions and processes, but NDR is on the list of the most important. 

With NDR monitoring your network, you get real-time visibility into current and emerging issues. Having this visibility and rapid alert process continuously operating and learning about typical network behaviors over time, significantly enhances your cybersecurity team’s ability to identify and respond to threats before attackers impact the business. 

The Architecture of an NDR Solution 

An NDR solution typically comprises two main components: a data collector and an analytics engine. The data collector gathers and processes network telemetry data from various sources, such as routers, switches and other key IT infrastructure components. 

The analytics engine is where threat detection and anomaly identification occur. It uses advanced machine learning algorithms and behavioral analysis techniques that detect suspicious activities. Additionally, it provides alerts and actionable insights for security teams. 

Tending to Your NDR Deployment 

Most NDR solutions have out-of-the-box deployment setups that allow them to learn about your network before they start to highlight any anomalies. Via user-friendly interfaces and flexible settings, NDR solutions also enable security teams to customize their setup for optimal performance and maximize threat detection. Ongoing effective NDR benefits rely on accurately identifying malicious activities while minimizing false positives. You want to minimize your team’s management and monitoring burdens without risking threats going undetected. 

To make sure your NDR system works optimally, it’s crucial to fine-tune its configuration and filters. Now, you may be thinking, “What? That sounds like more work rather than the less promised!” But fear not, you don’t need to modify your NDR solution constantly. But by carefully defining and adjusting filters to match your network’s usual behavior, you can adjust your NDR solution to focus on the most important network traffic and events and reduce unnecessary alerts to improve detection accuracy and usefulness. This improves the accuracy of threat detection but also enhances operational efficiency by alerting security teams of only noteworthy incidents. 

NDR solutions allow the customization of settings via a broad set of configuration options that system admins can use to deliver based on their organization’s specific needs. Good NDR solutions offer the granular control necessary to monitor complex network environments. They provide the ability to configure and fine-tune various components such as data feeds, rules and filters, detection methods, method instances, submethods and events, while also suppressing false positives.  

What do you Typically Need to Tune? 

Let’s take a closer look at some of these items that you can typically adjust to customize your NDR solution. 

Data Feeds – NDR data feeds provide logical groupings of network telemetry data from different network segments. By organizing data feeds based on your network architecture, you can apply targeted detection rules and gain insights into specific areas of your infrastructure. Which will allow you to focus attention on network segments that may contain especially sensitive information. 

Filters – By using filters in an NDR solution, you can define major network subnets, key servers, services like DNS and DHCP and other critical components. By enabling contextual-level information categorization, filters allow the NDR system to detect more accurately and reduce false positives. 

Detection Methods and Instances – Detection methods are algorithms that recognize specific anomalies or malicious behaviors. Each method can have multiple instances, each with its configuration and assigned data feeds. This flexibility allows you to fine-tune the detection sensitivity of your NDR based on the characteristics of different network segments. 

Events – When an NDR system detects a potential threat, it generates an event. Events contain detailed information about the detected anomaly; event details such as timestamps, who was responsible and communication records which triggered the detection and correlation with the MITRE ATT&CK framework. This rich context aids in incident investigation and rapid response. 

False Positives – False positives are inevitable in any detection system—especially given the unique characteristics of each network. Advanced NDR solutions provide mechanisms to mark specific events as false positives, tuning the detection engine to ignore similar events in the future. Doing this improves the accuracy of the system. 

Exclusions – NDR systems enable you to exclude specific traffic that you do not need to monitor. You can create exclusions based on various criteria, such as IP addresses, protocols or specific network segments. Through this process, relevant data flows are monitored and suspicious activities are flagged for further investigation only in the data and network segments you specifically want to monitor.  

Using Perspectives to Boost Detection 

Perspectives in some NDR solutions allow you to prioritize detected events based on various parameters. These parameters can include the criticality of the affected assets, the anomaly’s severity or the confidence level of the detection. By defining multiple perspectives, you can customize the alerting and response actions to align with your organization’s risk management strategy. 

For instance, you can create a perspective that prioritizes events related to critical servers or a perspective that focuses on high-severity anomalies. These perspectives enable security teams to quickly identify and respond to the most urgent threats while also maintaining a broad view of the overall security posture via other perspectives and event monitoring. 

Some other ways to streamline detection and response in addition to perspectives are: 

Notifications – Configuring the NDR system to send email or other notifications to relevant stakeholders when specific events are detected. This enables rapid awareness of any potential issues and facilitates timely responses. 

Event Logging – Many organizations use a SIEM (security information and event management) system as part of their multi-layered cybersecurity strategy. NDR systems can forward detected events to SIEM systems or other external log management solutions for visibility and correlation with other security events. 

Forensics – Forensics assist with post-incident activity. Many NDR solutions have built-in capabilities to help with post-incident forensics. They provide valuable forensic evidence for in-depth analysis and investigations. Detecting incidents before they cause damage is important. However, getting to the root cause that allowed an incident to occur and fixing any security gaps to prevent future attacks is equally important.  

Active Response Measures – Many NDR solutions support active response actions, such as triggering firewall rules or network access control policies in response to anomaly detection. The goal is to prevent the spread of potential cyberattack vectors and to contain or mitigate detected threats. 

Best Practices are Key 

Many NDR solutions allow you to configure the settings and detection parameters extensively. But it’s important not to get carried away with the flexibility. Doing so could prevent the powerful tools in your NDR solution from delivering the protections you need. Best practices have emerged that can guide you on your configuration journey. I highlight some of them below, and your NDR supplier will be able to help and advise you on how to tweak your NDR of choice. 

Basic Ground Rules – Understand the network traffic and expected behaviors in your specific environment to a deep level. Focus on detecting relevant threats rather than generating a high volume of events. Regularly review and update filters and false positive rules. 

Data Quality – Verify that high-quality data is flowing into the NDR system. The timestamps, sampling rates and data files being collected and processed should be consistent. Poor data hygiene can lead to missed detections and false positives. 

Filter Best Practices – When defining filters, start simple and then move on to more complex relational ones. It’s important to provide clear descriptions and notes for the filters to make them easier to understand and maintain (like commenting on source code). Be thoughtful when defining false positive rules and consider each rule’s specific context and scope. Regularly review and update false positive rules and confirm that they are still relevant and effective. 

Adjusting Method Sensitivity – NDR solutions enable you to adjust the sensitivity of specific detection methods according to your network’s characteristics and risk tolerance. Focus on parameters like thresholds, time windows and baselines to find the optimal balance between detecting genuine threats and reducing false positives. As with other settings, periodically review the parameters you are tracking to understand if it’s still relevant. 

Final Thoughts 

NDR is a core part of all robust cybersecurity strategies. It provides the flexibility, granularity and advanced detection capabilities necessary to protect modern networks. By understanding the key components of NDR configuration, using different perspectives and automated event actions and following best practices for tuning and false-positive management, organizations can get the most out of their NDR investment and improve their overall security. Making this shift can also free up their highly skilled cybersecurity team to focus on activities that drive the business forward.