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The ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats has compelled organizations across various industries to reassess their security strategies. As attackers become increasingly sophisticated, utilizing techniques such as encryption, living-off-the-land tactics, and lateral movement to evade traditional defenses, security teams are faced with the challenge of detecting and mitigating these threats before they cause harm.
Security teams globally have prioritized endpoint detection and response (EDR), which has proven to be effective in detecting and responding to threats. However, the increasing sophistication of threat actors has led them to adapt and evolve their tactics, rendering traditional endpoint security measures less effective.
Critical infrastructure providers in the financial services, energy and utilities, transportation, and government sectors are particularly vulnerable to these advanced threats. These organizations often have proprietary systems that cannot be protected by traditional endpoint security, unique protocols that may not be recognized by existing security tools, or are governed by regulations that require full disclosure and proof of mitigation.
Elite security teams have turned to network detection and response (NDR) as a means of identifying suspicious behavior and demonstrating full mitigation and compliance. NDR provides an immutable record of all network activities, enabling threat hunters to proactively search for potential threats and demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements.
FINANCIAL SERVICES:
Defending against silent threats to financial data
The financial services industry is particularly vulnerable to cyber threats, with the sector being the most targeted globally. Financial institutions operate under strict regulatory requirements and manage highly sensitive data, making them an attractive target for threat actors. Network detection and response (NDR) is essential for identifying unauthorized data access, protecting microsecond transactions, and demonstrating regulatory compliance.
Detecting unauthorized data access and exfiltration
Banks and investment firms deploy NDR solutions to monitor for subtle indicators of data theft. Unlike many industries where attackers seek to disrupt operations, financial services attackers often aim to remain undetected while accessing valuable data. NDR platforms help identify suspicious data access patterns and exfiltration attempts, even when disguised within encrypted channels.
For instance, consider a scenario where a major financial institution is dealing with an attacker who has established persistence for over six months and is slowly exfiltrating customer financial data using encrypted channels during normal business hours. This type of activity could be missed by SIEM and EDR tools, but NDR can detect anomalous traffic patterns that other tools miss.
Maintaining a microsecond security advantage
High-frequency trading (HFT) environments face unique security challenges due to ultra-low latency requirements, making traditional inline security tools impractical. Custom hardware often cannot support endpoint agents, creating visibility gaps, while proprietary algorithms require protection from theft and manipulation.
Advanced NDR solutions address these challenges through passive monitoring that introduces zero latency while maintaining full network visibility. They provide sophisticated protocol analysis for proprietary trading protocols that conventional tools cannot decode, plus microsecond-precision timestamping allows the detection of subtle manipulation attempts.
Demonstrating regulatory compliance
With regulations like the Digital Operations Resilience Act (DORA), Network and Information Security Directive (NIS2), and FINRA rules, banks must maintain comprehensive audit trails of network activity. NDR solutions provide the detailed forensic evidence necessary for both compliance verification and post-incident investigation.
NDR deployments provide continuous network monitoring and evidence preservation required by regulators. When a financial institution experiences a security incident, NDR can demonstrate exactly what happened, how they responded, and provide evidence of whether a breach has been fully remediated, which is increasingly becoming a regulatory expectation.
ENERGY AND UTILITIES:
Bridging IT/OT security gaps
The energy sector has become a prime target for criminal and nation-state actors, with traditional IT networks and operational technology (OT) environments controlling physical infrastructure. The recent Volt Typhoon attacks exemplify threats actively compromising critical infrastructure by targeting systems that can’t be protected by traditional endpoint security.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued Order No. 887 requiring internal network security monitoring (INSM) for high-impact bulk electric system security stacks, expanding beyond perimeter- and host-based security controls to include detection of anomalous network activity.
Identifying reconnaissance of energy infrastructure
Advanced threat actors typically conduct extensive reconnaissance before launching attacks. NDR solutions help identify these early-stage activities by detecting unusual scanning patterns, enumeration attempts, and other reconnaissance indicators against critical systems.
OT systems weren’t necessarily built with cybersecurity in mind, though they have strong physical security capabilities. These systems cannot run traditional endpoint security technology and also have their own unique vulnerabilities. Because they need to be accessible quickly in emergencies, they often don’t have stronger security, like complex passwords.
Monitoring IT/OT convergence points
Energy companies need to monitor traffic between IT and OT networks, watching for attempts to pivot from corporate networks into critical operational systems. Security teams can’t put endpoint agents on most OT systems, but they can monitor network traffic to and from these environments.
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners established cybersecurity baselines for electric distribution systems that require organizations to store and protect security-focused logs from authentication tools, intrusion detection/intrusion prevention systems, firewalls, and other security tools for detection and incident response activities. For OT assets where logs are non-standard or not available, they expect organizations to collect and store network traffic and communications between those assets and other systems for forensic purposes, which NDR makes possible.
Detecting protocol anomalies in industrial systems
Energy companies leverage NDR’s protocol analysis capabilities to identify anomalies in industrial control system communications that might indicate tampering or unauthorized commands. For example, consider a power generation facility using the Modbus protocol to control turbine operations. NDR monitoring might detect unexpected commands attempting to set turbine speed to dangerous levels or commands from unauthorized IP addresses, flagging deviations from established communication patterns before equipment damage or safety incidents occur.
TRANSPORTATION:
Securing increasingly connected systems
Increasingly interconnected systems within the transportation industry create greater risk as cybercriminals can access more data and potentially disrupt operations along entire supply chains.
Monitoring fleet management and control systems
Transportation organizations need to monitor communications between central management systems and vehicle fleets, ships, or aircraft. Modern transportation operations rely heavily on real-time data exchange, including GPS coordinates, route optimization, fuel management, and emergency communications. These communications often traverse multiple networks, creating numerous opportunities for interception or manipulation.
NDR can identify anomalies such as navigation commands from unauthorized sources, GPS spoofing attempts, or suspicious modifications to autopilot systems, enabling transportation operators to respond to threats before they impact passenger safety.
