WEBINAR | A Deep-Dive into 2023 Cyber Threats
Reduce Alert Noise and False Positives
Boost your team's productivity by cutting down alert noise and false positives.
Automate Security Operations
Boost efficiency, reduce burnout, and better manage risk through automation.
Dark Web Monitoring
Online protection tuned to the need of your business.
Maximize Existing Security Investments
Improve efficiencies from existing investments in security tools.
Beyond MDR
Move your security operations beyond the limitations of MDR.
Secure with Microsoft 365 E5
Boost the power of Microsoft 365 E5 security.
Secure Multi-Cloud Environments
Improve cloud security and overcome complexity across multi-cloud environments.
Secure Mergers and Acquisitions
Control cyber risk for business acquisitions and dispersed business units.
Operational Technology
Solve security operations challenges affecting critical operational technology (OT) infrastructure.
Force-Multiply Your Security Operations
Whether you’re just starting your security journey, need to up your game, or you’re not happy with an existing service, we can help you to achieve your security goals.
Detection Investigation Response
Modernize Detection, Investigation, Response with a Security Operations Platform.
Threat Hunting
Locate and eliminate lurking threats with ReliaQuest GreyMatter
Threat Intelligence
Find cyber threats that have evaded your defenses.
Model Index
Security metrics to manage and improve security operations.
Breach and Attack Simulation
GreyMatter Verify is ReliaQuest’s automated breach and attack simulation capability.
Digital Risk Protection
Continuous monitoring of open, deep, and dark web sources to identify threats.
Phishing Analyzer
GreyMatter Phishing Analyzer removes the abuse mailbox management by automating the DIR process for you.
Integration Partners
The GreyMatter cloud-native Open XDR platform integrates with a fast-growing number of market-leading technologies.
Unify and Optimize Your Security Operations
ReliaQuest GreyMatter is a security operations platform built on an open XDR architecture and designed to help security teams increase visibility, reduce complexity, and manage risk across their security tools, including on-premises, clouds, networks, and endpoints.
Blog
Company Blog
Case Studies
Brands of the world trust ReliaQuest to achieve their security goals.
Data Sheets
Learn how to achieve your security outcomes faster with ReliaQuest GreyMatter.
eBooks
The latest security trends and perspectives to help inform your security operations.
Industry Guides and Reports
The latest security research and industry reports.
Podcasts
Catch up on the latest cybersecurity podcasts, and mindset moments from our very own mental performance coaches.
Solution Briefs
A deep dive on how ReliaQuest GreyMatter addresses security challenges.
White Papers
The latest white papers focused on security operations strategy, technology & insight.
Videos
Current and future SOC trends presented by our security experts.
Events & Webinars
Explore all upcoming company events, in-person and on-demand webinars
ReliaQuest ResourceCenter
From prevention techniques to emerging security trends, our comprehensive library can arm you with the tools you need to improve your security posture.
Threat Research
Get the latest threat analysis from the ReliaQuest Threat Research Team. ReliaQuest ShadowTalk Weekly podcast featuring discussions on the latest cybersecurity news and threat research.
Shadow Talk
ReliaQuest's ShadowTalk is a weekly podcast featuring discussions on the latest cybersecurity news and threat research. ShadowTalk's hosts come from threat intelligence, threat hunting, security research, and leadership backgrounds providing practical perspectives on the week's top cybersecurity stories.
April 25, 2024
About ReliaQuest
We bring our best attitude, energy and effort to everything we do, every day, to make security possible.
Leadership
Security is a team sport.
No Show Dogs Podcast
Mental Performance Coaches Derin McMains and Dr. Nicole Detling interview world-class performers across multiple industries.
Make It Possible
Make It Possible reflects our focus on bringing cybersecurity awareness to our communities and enabling the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.
Careers
Join our world-class team.
Press and Media Coverage
ReliaQuest newsroom covering the latest press release and media coverage.
Become a Channel Partner
When you partner with ReliaQuest, you help deliver world-class cybersecurity solutions.
Contact Us
How can we help you?
A Mindset Like No Other in the Industry
Many companies tout their cultures; at ReliaQuest, we share a mindset. We focus on four values every day to make security possible: being accountable, helpful, adaptable, and focused. These values drive development of our platform, relationships with our customers and partners, and further the ReliaQuest promise of security confidence across our customers and our own teams.
More results...
In physical security terminology, standoff is the term used to refer to the physical distance between a defender and a threat. For example, concrete barriers placed in front of a building create a standoff distance from ground-based threats such as vehicle bourn suicide bombers (Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium is a great example). Standoff distances can range from a few meters (small arms) to thousands of miles (intercontinental ballistic missiles), but the important point to note about the concept is that different defensive systems create different standoff ranges in relation to different threats.
It struck me that, given the importance of standoff distance in physical security strategies, it was unusual that the concept has had little consideration within the field of cybersecurity. While there are a number of conceptual areas to explore when applying the concept to the digital estate, given that cybersecurity is fundamentally about the relationship between an aggressor (hacker) and a defender (cybersecurity professional), an obvious first point of analysis seems to be finding the equivalent of physical distance within a cyber context.
After considering a number of prominent historic and ongoing case studies, it seems to me that the cyber equivalent of the physical distance element of standoff is actor attribution. That is, standoff is reduced, or closed, between the aggressor and the defender, the better the defender is able to attribute a cyber-attack to a defined actor.
This assertion is based on observations around the use of cyber proxy forces and false flag operations by various nation states. Fictitious groups, such as the Guardians of Peace as a cover for the Sony hack of 2014, as well as the use of South Korean criminals to distribute malicious software that conducted DOS attacks against South Korean airport infrastructure, are both examples of attempts to create a digital standoff. In response forensic capabilities are often focused on attribution, closing the standoff distance between victim and target.
Apart from a novel way to visualize the relationship between defender and aggressor, the concept of cyber standoff can be more productively applied to considering the application of security to multiple systems enclosed within a single network. Many large modern networks have uneven security applied to them. For example, within a banking institution, externally facing email systems are inherently less secure than SWIFT system that would be naturally layered in more security protocols. Hence the maximum possible cyber standoff distance between an emails system is always going to be less than the standoff that can be achieved with a deeply nested internal system. At its core the concept of cyber standoff is a useful for measuring the appropriateness of deployed defences commensurate with the level of threat that they face.
A logical question to ask is ‘why is the concept of cyber standoff any different from other more established methods of measuring cybersecurity maturity level?’ The essential goal of the concept of standoff is to consider both the defences deployed and the capability that the threat possesses in a more holistic way that maturity and risk assessment currently do on their own.
Although not explicitly using standoff as a concept, schemes such as the UK CBEST initiative accredited by CREST and backed by the Bank of England, seek to capture the same interaction of aggressor and defender within their testing framework. These schemes are in their relative infancy and I think there is a place for more granular concepts, such cyber standoff, that could be used as more substantive elements to these initiatives.