BAE Introduces Cyber Threat Detection Service

BAE Systems today announced the launch of its Advanced Threat Detection (ATD) service in Australia.

This comes in response to growing concerns around targeted cyber attacks on businesses, and the Australian Government citing cyber security as one of its highest national security priorities. An increase in the scale, sophistication and anonymous nature of cyber crime has made it increasingly difficult to identify and defeat.

The Advanced Threat Detection (ATD) service detects the most sophisticated targeted cyber attacks against businesses. A wide range of international clients already use the solution, from law firms, financial services, defence and energy companies to the world leading Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Formula 1 team.

Enterprises that have rich and varied Intellectual Property (IP), data, corporate strategy and sensitive information are being targeted systematically by state-sponsored, “hactivist”, organised criminal and other attack groups. Detica offers businesses a way to detect and respond to these attacks.

The recent  Australian Cyber Crime and Security Survey by the Attorney-General, indicated that in terms of cyber security incidents, more than half the respondents considered attacks on their organization to be targeted. Motives included illicit financial gain (15%), hactivism (9%), using the system for further attacks (9%), being from a foreign government (5%), and being a competitor (4%).

This indicates a shift from previous conceptions that most attacks are non-targeted or indiscriminate.

Richard Watson, Managing Director, APAC and Middle East, BAE Systems Detica said, “Targeted attacks are designed to extract valuable or sensitive information from organisations by targeting specific individuals, often in positions of elevated privilege, such as directors, executives or legal counsel. The crafted nature of these attacks means that conventional security counter measures like anti-virus, firewalls and intrusion detection systems, or traditional managed security services are unlikely to detect them in time to prevent an impact.”

BAE System Detica’s Advanced Threat Detection service adopts unique behavioural monitoring and analytics technology which is designed to detect sophisticated threats. It analyses criminal and malicious activity and patterns across all networks of a business. The service provides customers with early warning of attacks on their infrastructure, rich business and threat context around those attacks, and advice on how to respond to them and avoid the impact.

Richard Watson added, “Organised criminal gangs, unscrupulous competitors and foreign nations are looking to exploit businesses by gaining access to data through targeted cyber attacks. These groups are sophisticated, well-funded and cleverly organised. The attacks are tailored to a company’s systems and designed to go undetected by avoiding the known attack signatures that conventional defences look for. Our team of expert cyber analysts can work with businesses and government to identify and respond to risks before they are able to impact.”

Advanced Threat Detection is one of the services in Detica’s Managed Security suite of offerings, available for companies to help protect themselves.