The Importance of User Behavior Intelligence [WHITE PAPER]

Writing a white paper means the company has a strong grasp of a pervasive problem. In this case, it addresses finding cyberattackers using stolen credentials to access private data.

According to the Ponemon Institute, it costs companies an average of $201 per record lost in a data breach. In 2014, the total number of records compromised was larger than the US population, meaning the cost to businesses would be more than half a billion dollars. And this doesn’t count the lost productivity time stolen from data breach victims and the value of the stolen data. Year after year, these breaches grow in number.

Attacks have changed and we know how they’ve changed. In nearly every press article or pronouncement by a company official, we read that the attacker had obtained valid user credentials to access and steal data. In the Anthem data breach, a database administrator witnessed his own credentials being used to steal data. Organizations have been focused on security information and event management (SIEM) and big data platforms, malware sand boxing, data loss prevention systems (DLP) and other new and improved versions of traditional security sensor products. These purchases fit current processes, many of which have their foundation in the 1990s.

Companies need a strategy to detect attackers using valid user credentials to impersonate users, which falls between initial point of compromise detection solutions and DLP; the land-and-expand portion of the attack chain. User behavior intelligence solutions like Exabeam fill this gap by focusing on credential use as the common activity across the attack chain.