Why companies need immune systems for a new era of threat

We are at the dawn of a new era, where cyberthreats continually defeat border defenses, and new machine-on-machine attacks are challenging the old approach to digital security.

This battlefield is the corporate network. The real danger is not just data loss or defaced websites – the danger is subtle attackers that creep in and gain control, without you knowing about it.

Increasing the height of our walls is no longer effective in protecting the city when the enemy is already inside. This calls for a shift in focus from the perimeter, to the inside of the network. Companies need to understand what is going on within their IT systems, find genuine threats and mitigate risk before damage is done.

Traditional approaches from the cybersecurity industry rely on inadequate, quickly outdated rules and signatures, an attempt at security that can’t protect against rapidly-evolving attacks. Thus, a novel approach that uses advanced mathematics and machine learning to replicate the most sophisticated security system known to man — our human immune system — is the only way to detect and defeat today’s advanced threats, including those from insiders.

Unlike traditional security mechanisms, such advanced approaches are self-learning, meaning that they do not rely on prior knowledge about threat characteristics, nor pre-defined rules and signatures.

What we call “Enterprise Immune System” technology, or applying the principles of the biological immune system to digital security is the first system that is proven to detect genuine cyber-threats, including those which bypass traditional controls, in real time.

Powered by mathematics and machine learning, ‘immune system’ technology learns the ‘pattern of life’ of an organization – right down to its individual machines and users. It is able to detect behaviors that deviate from this pattern of life, using its understanding of the environment to avoid false positives, and intelligently classify threats.

The Enterprise Immune System approach means that detection no longer depends on an archive of previous attacks. Instead, attacks can be spotted against the background understanding of what represents “normal” within a network.

On top of its detection capability, the Enterprise Immune System creates digital antibodies automatically, generating an immediate but measured response to the most threatening cyber breaches.

This immune system approach is both self-learning and self-defending.

Today, machine learning technology is the fundamental ally in the defense of systems from the today’s hackers, machines and insider threats, and in formulating response to unknown methods of cyber attack. It is a momentous step change in cyber security: defense must start within.

Nicole Eagan is the CEO of Darktrace. Headquartered in San Francisco, Calif., and Cambridge, England, Darktrace has raised over $50 million to fund its global expansion and now has more than 200 employees working across 20 countries. Follow @Darktrace on Twitter.