Intelligent CIO Kuwait Issue 5 | Page 18

EDITOR’S QUESTION intelligence based on data, collected from millions of endpoints globally, for out-of- band network traffic meta-data analytics based on AI, ML and advanced heuristics. Threat intelligence is key to achieving superior detection of advanced persistent threats with minimal false positives. A business handling large clusters of customer data should prospect NDR solutions that only analyse traffic meta-data, eliminating the risk of exposing payload data on unencrypted communication and ensuring compliance with both local and international data privacy laws. The exclusive focus on traffic meta-data eliminates privacy concerns surrounding non-encrypted traffic, but still lets SOCs identify network behaviour that violates policy. The ideal NDR deployment can further ease compliance by analysing encrypted traffic for suspicious behaviour without having to decrypt actual data packets. Enterprises everywhere must protect corporate-issued endpoints, user-managed devices and network elements, as well as BYOD and IoT deployments. This is particularly true in most UAE and Saudi firms. A recent Honeywell study shows two thirds of companies operating in these countries view IoT as critical to growth. Besides the main pain points of protection, costs and skills, NDR will help dramatically in terms of interoperability within the IT ecosystem, especially for hybrid infrastructures with smart devices, IoT, Operational Technology (OT) and even legacy systems. Finally, all prospecting NDR buyers should seek a single-pane solution that offers a bird’s eye view of all network activity across the infrastructure, saving them time and money without requiring an extensive, skilled staff to maintain the solution, while stepping up the security maturity ladder. www.intelligentcio.com