James Dougherty, Author at Plixer

How cybercriminals are using ML and how to combat it

You and I both know that AI is all the buzz today. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is quickly fueling the evolution of today’s high-octane environment.

Being able to effectively monitor and manage today’s cyber threats is a monumental task. Every day I talk to people whose pain points are similar. They don’t have the budget or resources needed to effectively deal with this onslaught of activity that their team is facing. It makes sense that AI/ML in threat intelligence is what today’s SecOps teams are leveraging to deal with zero days and other unknown APTs in their network.

So are your enemies . . . . . . .

NDR

5 ways university networks need to shift in the post-pandemic world

09.13.22 - James Dougherty

It’s fall here on the east coast of the US and that means a few things. First is that the weather and leaves start changing and the second is that students start going back to school. I live in a college town, so seeing Franklin Street teaming with young minds ready to be molded is refreshing since there has been little sign of that over the past 48 months. The reality is that things still aren’t the same.

General

Gain observability by replicating network data streams

05.19.22 - James Dougherty

The need for more telemetry data is real.

The word observability is being used quite a bit nowadays. I see it being used in discussions about SIEM tools. My guess is that you’ve heard it and have a general understanding that at its core the term refers to the collection of measurements, better known as telemetry. Telemetry data is extremely valuable for network monitoring, but the million-dollar question is why?

NDR

The devil is in the details: A deeper look into forensics with metadata.

01.26.22 - James Dougherty

Last month, we were faced with another attack. It’s funny, isn’t it? The only thing that we are assured of these days is that an attack will happen. To be truthful, last month’s logjam vulnerability was a bit more of an issue than most. I was talking about the attack with one of our larger European customers and they supported a position that I have had since I started with Plixer over 15 years ago. In a critical situation, similar to the log4j attack, leveraging contextual metadata is the most efficient way to contain the incident. Here are a few reasons why metadata is the better choice for your visibility needs.

Network Operations

What is network traffic intelligence?

08.11.21 - James Dougherty

With the onslaught of malware and cloud applications increasing, network traffic intelligence has become increasingly important. When an infection is unearthed and the incident response team moves in to figure out what exactly has happened, one of the first things they will do is request the logs, including the flow (NetFlow and IPFIX) data. Network and application issues are troubleshot in a similar way.