In this blog series, we dive into the challenges faced by our heroes of Threat-Informed Defense, how they address them, and the benefits they are driving for their team and organization. 

The day in the life of a SOC manager is like working as an air traffic controller. There’s always something new to monitor, and you’re constantly having to prioritize activities to optimize resources and mitigate risk. Success hinges on visibility and the same is true in the SOC. 

Managing teams to optimize defense activities and resources is hard due to lack of visibility. In fact, more than 70% of SOC team members believe their organizations may have already been compromised without their knowledge.

SOC managers ask themselves: 

• Are our security improvements outpacing adversary evolution?
• Am I covered from the threat of the day?
• Are the different teams taking the right actions to mitigate risk?
• Is there an underlying trend in the adversary space that we should prioritize?

Without a unified view of coverage against the latest and emerging threats, it’s a challenge to stay up to date with threat intelligence content to ensure the team is focused on the right things, coordinate with other teams responsible for threat detection and investigation, and confidently report to leadership on the status of the organization’s defensive posture and current risk exposure. 

This is where Tidal Cyber comes in. We give you the visibility you need to simplify SOC assessment and prioritization and communication with leadership. 

How Tidal Cyber Helps

We fuse CTI, Blue Team, and Red Team activities with SOC management to streamline security operations and stakeholder communication. Our unified view of coverage helps you pinpoint attacks faster and figure out where you have or need coverage in as few as 31 seconds. This includes answers to coverage questions on the threat of the day and data to help prioritize actions across teams. 

Additionally, we support trend analysis and history of coverage to help anticipate and prepare for what may be around the corner. This type of visibility is increasingly important as the speed at which threat actor tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) change is accelerating and in ways we haven’t seen before.  

A recent example is the rapid and surprising evolution of Black Basta ransomware and a new campaign that featured unusual TTPs including “email bombing,” calls from fake IT support, and tricking users into using a legitimate Windows feature to compromise the system. Tidal Cyber maps to MITRE ATT&CK® and provides additional tools, research, integrations with popular threat intel vendors, and understanding to provide a rich view of the landscape. In the case of Black Basta, we aggregate and provide all 56 Black Basta TTPs in one location to help you make a quick but holistic assessment of coverage and potential gaps across multiple teams and functions so you can proactively shore up defenses. We also include specific mitigation recommendations to help you address the most significant TTPs faster. 

We leverage that visibility into our reporting capabilities by means of confidence scores which quantify your cybersecurity risk and help eliminate the communication disconnect that often exists between security professionals and executive leaders. By comparing your defensive stack against relevant threats, Tidal Cyber generates a coverage map and confidence score to provide visibility into your attack coverage. You can deliver timely, data-driven reporting on your current security posture or exposure with respect to a specific threat, as well as track scores over time to communicate changes in defensive posture. Confidence scores are also an effective tool to help SOC managers coordinate activities and reinforce the synergies across teams and functions.

From SOC visibility to prioritization to reporting, Tidal Cyber has SOC managers covered. 

Interested in learning more about how we can help you and others in your enterprise become Threat-Informed Defense heroes? Reach out to us.