Why is it worth choosing a "Formula 1 engine" in SOC?

In the world of cybersecurity, we often hear that artificial intelligence (AI) is the future. This is true, but it is also important to remember that AI only works effectively if it is built on a strong, reliable system. Just as a Formula 1 race car cannot win without cutting-edge technology, a security operations center (SOC) cannot succeed without a solid infrastructure.

More than 30 years of experience in cybersecurity

The NetWitness story began in the '90s, at the initiative of the US government. Today, it operates as an independent company with a specific focus on cybersecurity. A growing number of organizations, including government and defense actors, have become dedicated users of the NetWitness solution, taking advantage of the platform's benefits, which also help with transparency, traceability and foresight.

The importance of on-premises architecture and real data

The NetWitness solution stands out for providing full support for on-premises environments, which is particularly important for data security and sovereignty in the defense, financial and government sectors. Although the company can operate in hybrid and cloud environments, the advantage of on-premises architectures is that these infrastructures still offer the highest level of security, especially when it comes to protecting the most sensitive data.

A key feature of the system is that it can not only analyze data stored in the cloud or data centers but can also ensure that data is managed securely even when the system is completely isolated from the internet. These types of "air-gapped" environments present unique challenges, and NetWitness gives you the ability to ensure that data storage and analysis does not suffer degradation, even when the system is not connected to the Internet.

The advantage of analyzing raw data sets

One of the outstanding features of the platform is that it uses deep packet inspection to analyze network traffic - meaning that it does not rely on metadata or traffic statistics but captures and analyses the entire network traffic. Unlike solutions that only monitor network data flows or process netflow-based data, NetWitness uses real, raw data packets to analyze traffic. This allows the system to not only identify a single event or attack, but also reconstruct the entire communication, looking back to activities that occurred days or weeks before.

This allows analysts to look in full detail not only at suspicious events, but also at the entire history, such as exploits used by attackers, commands executed and replayed data. This type of in-depth analysis is essential for detecting complex, multi-stage attacks and undetected threats that persist for extended periods of time.

The importance of judicial network analysis for legal compliance

The NIS2 Directive imposes strict reporting and demonstration obligations on industrial and critical infrastructure. Cybersecurity professionals must be able not only to detect attacks, but also to back up the detected events with the appropriate evidence. NetWitness provides a unique capability as it captures not only event-related alerts, but also the entire network traffic, including all communications and data flows, allowing for a complete reconstruction of events. This is particularly important in ensuring compliance with NIS2, where companies must submit a detailed report to the authorities within 72 hours. Without this in-depth investigation, it is impossible to truly demonstrate how an attack has affected business operations and how to respond with appropriate measures.

Proactive threat detection with predictive threat intelligence

The NetWitness platform is also able to predict new threats. Thanks to the Before AI integration, it monitors new domain registrations and suspicious IP addresses that appear on the Internet and predicts potential attacks up to 90 days before they occur. This allows the system to proactively raise an alert before an attack reaches the system.

SOCWISE and NetWitness close cooperation, the AI development teams are working together to anticipate new threats and provide solutions that help SOC analysts to proactively respond to future attacks. The expertise provided by SOCWISE combined with the power of the NetWitness' platform will allow users to be notified before an attack actually occurs.

Integrating metadata and business context

The platform is able to interpret the data in a business context, so you can see not only the IP addresses and hostnames, but also the business relationships behind them. By gathering metadata and embedding connections between systems, the system interprets events not only from a technical but also from a business perspective. This helps AI to more accurately determine the health of critical systems and provides analysts with valuable business intelligence to consider the impact of attacks.

This level of data processing allows the system to better understand communications across the network and ensures that the impact of attacks on business processes can be immediately detected and managed.

The combination of AI and human decision-making

Artificial intelligence is a great help, but it is no substitute for human understanding. AI tools can be extremely useful for rapid detection of network threats, but human intervention is still needed in the most complex situations. NetWitness not only provides automated detection and alert generation, but also gives analysts the ability to dig deeper into the data, reconstruct attacks and understand their true impact.

The system provides the ability to replay all network traffic, reconstruct emails and fully examine all data that has moved through the system. In addition, the integration of generative AI will make the system even more efficient in the future, as it will be able to automatically generate new detection rules based on the searches and analyses already performed.

Summary

The NetWitness platform has unique capabilities that provide the highest level of protection for data management, threat detection and forensic network analysis. Its on-premises architecture, raw data packet analysis and predictive threat intelligence all contribute to cyber defense professionals' ability to effectively protect critical systems against constantly evolving threats. Although on-premises is a priority, NetWitness also supports hybrid deployment and can be integrated with a wide range of external systems (e.g. identity managers, SIEMs, endpoint solutions). The goal: see - and interpret - all your data in one place.

Thanks to the close collaboration between SOCWISE and NetWitness, we offer industry-standard, innovative solutions that enable you to prepare for future challenges in network security.