enables analysts to focus on the true incidents. Another key element is the contextual information which
offers guidance for effectively containing the threat and limiting the damage.
But does that mean other alerts be ignored? Absolutely not. However, using NTA as the sentinel of your
organization reduces analyst workload and improves the effectiveness of incident investigation. It will not
completely eliminate the problem of alert overload, but choosing a more reliable signal source can help
overcome the challenge of noise.
Better alert correlation
Only 30 percent of organizations rely on fully automated or mostly automated alert correlation. The other
70 percent are manually triaged. Amid the current severe shortage of skilled cybersecurity industry
workers, this situation is untenable.
The good news is there are multiple approaches to the alert triage problem, including efforts from Security
Information and Events Management (SIEM) and Security Orchestration Automation and Response
(SOAR) tools (). The difference between NTA and these technologies is that while a SIEM solution ingests
loads of alerts and tries to make sense of them, NTA solutions work with the initial source: the network
traffic. By directly analyzing network traffic and correlating dozens or hundreds of events from the
environment, NTAs can generate a crisp, complete picture of each security incident.
Benefits of NTA Solutions
In addition to full visibility, improved security with NTA solutions can be achieved because the reasoning
capabilities such as machine learning, and behavioral analytics generate threat intelligence that can be
applied to network traffic meta-data in real time. These capabilities allow for detection of advanced
attacks, including malicious, fraudulent or risky user behavior that can lead to breaches or data leaks,
helping to limit the risks of sensitive data exfiltration. Fueling automated and highly accurate alert triage,
NTA solutions enable incident response teams to focus their attention on relevant security incidents.
Identifying behavior that represents policy violations while also recording traffic meta-data for extended
periods of time, enables NTA tools to be an integral element in maintaining compliance.
NTA solutions pick up the signal other tools may miss, particularly when it comes to advanced attacks,
by providing complete visibility and insights into threat related network activity across an entire
infrastructure. Moreover, by automating alert triage they have the power to increase efficiency of incident
response efforts and more easily ensure compliance.