How Knowledge Graphs Are Helping Combat Cyber Threats

The cybersecurity landscape with ever increasing cyber threats is in a constant state of evolution. With cyber criminals using new tactics and becoming increasingly sophisticated over time, the need for organisations to be vigilant and prepared   has   also   increased. To effectively mitigate these risks, organisations need advanced data solutions that can help them correlate and analyze connections in real time, on a large scale.

This is where graphs come into the picture. They represent the flows of assets that require protection as well as the vulnerabilities that exist between them. Graphs easily capture the complexity of IT infrastructure and security tools. Graph visualisations can then show the critical information needed to determine how to stop the attack, which could include blocking user accounts or access from specific IP address ranges. When a company faces a cyberattack, predicting the attackers' next move is as simple as matching the latest attack with a node on the graph and seeing what happens next.

For example, a multinational banking and financial services company uses graphs to secure its critical assets. Risk analysts can grant or deny requests and trace employees’ actions to prevent breaches and fraud. Additionally, Government agencies, securities and insurance providers and law enforcement across the region are also at the forefront in leveraging the power of graph data platforms, empowering them to identify and catch bad actors and prevent and minimize risks and losses.

Digital twins and what role they play in helping address cyber risks

In today’s digitally connected world, organizations need to get smarter. They should deploy highly advanced solutions to stay on par with the constantly evolving threat landscape. As a response to this, organizations today are realizing the true potential of digital twins and how knowledge graphs and digital twins, as a combination, can be a very powerful tool against cyber threats. 

A knowledge graph can create a digital twin of the environment, giving organizations a holistic view of their network ecosystem in a unified manner. This helps cybersecurity professionals within the organization to identify loopholes and act accordingly. This perspective is extremely useful for cybersecurity analysts who can then develop models to detect malicious activities and take the necessary steps. In fact, creating and analyzing a graph digital twin of an organisation's infrastructure is one of the most effective ways to improve its cybersecurity posture since it addresses the never-ending, dynamic complexity of vulnerabilities and loopholes.

Staying of the ever-increasing cyber threats

Cyberattacks have been around for a while, but recently there has been a spike in data breaches and ransomware attacks which has proved that no enterprise, large or small, can escape insidious cyberattacks. Even though organisations are trying their best to deal with this, challenges remain. To make a difference, companies are turning towards more evolved and reliable solutions like knowledge graphs.

Graphs are the most natural way to process data. They are well-suited for cybersecurity because they integrate multiple data sources, manage large volumes of data volumes, and can easily reveal dependencies. This is a huge help for security teams, where data is collected from numerous monitoring systems. No matter how many tools or sources the organization has, they will all generate many alerts and logs. When one factors in the relationships within and across all that data, the dependencies, and paths from one resource to another can be vast and confusing which is why knowledge graphs stand as an ideal answer to the complicated security related questions for organizations looking to strengthen their core security posture.

-- By Rahul Tenglikar, Regional Director, Neo4j

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