Accenture [ACN] and Endgame, Inc. have created a joint threat hunting as-a-Service offering for clients to help identify and carefully remove cyber adversaries who evade traditional security methods, the companies said Monday.
The new offering will be powered by Endgame and operated by Accenture’s senior cybersecurity hunters. The hunters are able to identify and terminate the efforts of attackers targeting the intellectual property, business systems, or other key assets of clients, the companies said.
The service will consist of three main parts: continuous endpoint monitoring and reporting for targeted attacks bypassing traditional defenses, the ability to expose and eliminate active and dormant adversaries that have infiltrated networks followed by a precise response that does not disrupt normal business operations, and an actionable list of vulnerabilities and procedures to remediate and prevent future attacks to reduce the cost and impact of incident response.
The cooperative program is an outgrowth of Accenture’s alliance with and minority investment in Endgame, first announced in March 2016. This was meant to resell the company’s hunt platform as part of a larger portfolio of cyber defense strategies including Accenture’s Cyber intelligence Platform.
Managing director and security lead at Accenture Analytics Vikram Desai highlighted that while many cyber attackers can get around the best fortified traditional enterprise defense system networks, this new offering will focus on preventing the attack from occurring.
Rather than building a taller defensive wall, we’re giving our clients the ability to strike first – to stop adversaries before they attack. Delivering this capability requires two fundamental elements: battle tested experience outmaneuvering enemies and specialized technology that gives you an unfair advantage.”
“With Endgame, this is exactly what our hunting as-a-Service offering delivers. Armed with it, our clients spend less time dealing with threats and more time on innovation and growth,” Desai added.
Nate Fick, the CEO of Endgame, noted defenders need to reduce the time an adversary can have in a network (dwell time) by hunting for attackers inside the enterprise architecture.
“Endgame and Accenture’s joint solution combines state-of-the-art technology with top-notch talent in order to deliver an always on, end-to-end hunt solution that simply outsmarts traditional Indicators of Compromise (IOC) and signature-based tools,” he said.
The companies cited analysts and clients approving of the offering.
Zeus Kerravala, founder and principal analyst at ZK Research, asserted that companies need to arm their defense resources with skills and technologies to generate actionable intelligence and hunt for threats effectively rather than waiting for a cyberattack to hit.
“That’s why the Accenture and Endgame threat hunting as-a-Service offering is an industry game changer. Drawing upon Accenture’s deep bench of skilled security professionals and combined with Endgame’s platform it will enable the early detection and removal of malicious activity,” he said.
“The next generation of security challenges requires a more proactive approach to detect and respond to threats that have evaded defensive technologies. I have found Endgame’s Hunt platform helpful in allowing an analyst to quickly detect never-before-visible malicious behaviors on host systems, and block and remove threats at the earliest stages,” Ryan Gurr, the information security manager at NuScale Power, added.