Segmenting With MSI MachineTruth

Many organizations struggle to implement network segmentation and secure network enclaves for servers, industrial controls, SCADA or regulated data. MicroSolved, Inc. (“MSI”) has been helping clients solve information security challenges for nearly twenty-five years on a global scale. In helping our clients segment their networks and protect their traffic flows, we identified a better approach to solving this often untenable problem.

That approach, called MachineTruth™, leverages our proprietary machine learning and data analytics platform to support our industry leading team of experts throughout the process. Our team leverages offline analysis of configuration files, net flow and traffic patterns to simplify the challenge. Instead of manual review by teams of network and systems administrators, MachineTruth takes automated deep dives into the data to provide real insights into how to segment, where to segment, what filtering rules need to be established and how those rules are functioning as they come online.

Our experts then work with your network and security teams, or one of our select MachineTruth Implementation Partners, to guide them through the process of installing and configuring filtering devices, detection tools and applications needed to support the segmentation changes. As the enclaves start to take shape, ongoing oversight is performed by the MSI team, via continual analytics and modeling throughout the segmentation effort. As the data analysis and implementation processes proceed, the controls and rules are optimized and transitioned to steady state maintenance.

Lastly, the MSI team works with the segmentation stakeholders to document, socialize and transfer knowledge to those who will manage and support the newly segmented network and its various enclaves for the long term. This last step is critical to ensuring that the network changes and segmentation initiatives remain in place in the future.

This data-focused, machine learning-based approach enables segmentation for even the most complex of environments. It has been used to successfully save hundreds of man-years of labor and millions of dollars in overhead costs. It has reduced the time to segment international networks from years to months, while significantly raising the quality and security of the new environments. It has accomplished these feats, all while reducing network downtime, outages and potentially dangerous misconfiguration issues.

If your organization is considering or in the process of performing network segmentation for your critical data, you should take a look at the MachineTruth approach from MSI. It could mean the difference between success and struggle for this critical initiative.


HoneyPoint as a Tool for Device Inventory

Another clever use for HoneyPoint™ Agent, running on a Linux system without SMB components, is to have the system listen on the Windows SMB ports (135-139 & 445). The HoneyPoint will then inventory the Windows machines and other SMB speaking tools that attempt to contact it. Since this traffic is pretty routine, it will serve as an inventory mechanism for these types of systems on the local collision domain, or other “same-as-on-the-LAN” segments.

Running HoneyPoint in this fashion has been very useful to several of our ICS customers and has allowed them a quick, and most importantly, passive way to identify hosts on the same segment. No probes or scans needed! 

Give us a call today at (614) 351-1237 or email us at info@microsolved.com if you want to discuss how HoneyPoint might be used in your environment. We look forward to talking with you, and as always, thanks for reading! 

MSI Launches TigerTrax Network Discovery, Mapping & Analysis Service

We are proud to announce the immediate availability of an entirely new service offering in our security tool kit, made possible by TigerTrax™.

This service offering leverages the power of MSI’s proprietary TigerTrax analytics platform to parse, correlate and visualize the configurations (and packet logs (if desired)) from the routers, switches and firewalls of your network “en masse”. 

Our security and analytics teams then create detailed maps of the network as seen from the eyes of the machines, document the various network segments and their relationships, build a hierarchy of powerful machines and segments, identify hardening techniques that could help your organization better secure your network and provide insights into the gap between your organization’s “common wisdom” versus the real environment.

We can even teach “Close The Gap” sessions to help re-align your team’s “common wisdom” with “machine truth” and to help socialize the new knowledge to other groups.

How it works:

  • The client delivers the configuration and log files as needed for the service. MSI can assist with this step, if needed, at an additional hourly consulting fee.
  • The offering uses TigerTrax to perform automated analysis of the configuration and log files as needed – holistically, systemically and “en masse”. 
  • Various data points are delivered to the analysts and security team who then create the documentation, maps and reports. Visualized data is also generated using the TigerTrax platform where appropriate.
  • Any professional services, such as interviews/questionnaires, gap analysis and training are provided by MSI team members using our proprietary delivery methodologies.
  • Completely passive, offline analysis is perfect for critical networks.
Three different levels of service are available, as is single – one time engagements (perfect for M&A activities, and new IT management) or ongoing subscriptions that allow organizations to track changes and maintain knowledge over time. The highest level of service also includes 30 days worth of packet analytics to identify overtly compromised hosts and to determine “normal operating conditions”, which is often quite useful for incident response activities in the future.
 
Give is a call today at (614) 351-1237 or email us at info@microsolved.com to start a conversation about how we can help you know the truth about your network!

Using TigerTrax to Analyze Device Configurations & Discover Networks

One of the biggest challenges that our M&A clients face is discovering what networks look like, how they are interconnected and what assets are priorities in their newly acquired environments. Sure, you bought the company and the ink is drying on the contracts — but now you have to fold their network into yours, make sure they meet your security standards and double check to make sure you know what’s out there.

That’s where the trouble begins. Because, in many cases, the result is “ask the IT folks”. You know, the already overworked, newly acquired, untrusted and now very nervous IT staff of the company you just bought. Even if they are honest and expedient, they often forget some parts of the environment or don’t know themselves that parts exist…

Thus, we get brought in, as a part of our Information Security Mergers & Acquisitions practice. Our job is usually to discover assets, map the networks and perform security assessments to identify gaps that don’t meet the acquiring company’s policies. Given that we have had to do this so often, we have designed a great new technique for performing these type of mapping and asset identification engagements. For us, instead of asking the humans, we simply ask the machines. We accumulate the router, switch, firewall and other device configurations and then leverage TigerTrax’s unique analytics capabilities to quickly establish network instances, interconnections, prioritized network hosts & segments, common configuration mistakes, etc. “en masse”. TigerTrax  then outputs that data for the MSI analysts, who can quickly perform their assessments, device reviews and inventories — armed with real-world data about the environment!

This approach has been winning us client kudos again and again!

Want to discuss our M&A practice and the unique ways that TigerTrax and MSI can help you before, during and after a merger or acquisition? Give us a call at (614) 351-1237 or drop us a line at info (at) microsolved /dot/ com. We’d be happy to schedule a FREE, no commitment & no pressure call with our Customer Champions & our security engineers.