Detecting security threats is difficult work, now more so than ever. Our threat intelligence tools are playing catch-up with increasingly sophisticated attack vectors, including polymorphic malware, quick-turn domains and other turn-on-a-dime attack tactics.

It only makes sense to assume that sooner or later your company will have to handle a security incident and the subsequent recovery from any damage caused.

Creating an incident response policy before an incident occurs can help you minimize risk and ensure that you and your team are prepared. By planning your response ahead of time, you will be able to respond faster and more efficiently, and possibly even prevent additional damage from occurring.

In this blog post I’ll cover osquery’s ability to provide performant behavior and its capabilities to excel at enterprise grade requirements. Many observations covered in this blog will highlight various capabilities of osquery that should aid in your journey toward an enterprise-grade osquery deployment.

Orchestration engines such as Demisto give security professionals the freedom to integrate multiple services into coordinated, automated workflows.  Simple REST APIs allow the transfer of data from one application or service to another in a reliable, straight-forward manner. With the appropriate data sources, users are enabled to create workflows and reports for incident investigation and response. In removing the human element, orchestration engines can improve the overall efficiency and consistency of incident response, while freeing up time for other tasks.

Uptycs leverages the open-source osquery agent in order to acquire real-time data about nearly any facet of your infrastructure (more about osquery here). This data is streamed, aggregated, and stored in the Uptycs backend and then made accessible via our API, allowing the integration of Uptycs data with other services.

Osquery has become a popular source of instrumentation for a wide variety of use cases. On github security showcase, it is currently among the top most popular open source security projects. Given the popularity, a recurring question is what use cases can one address with osquery in an enterprise environment?

There's a big disconnect between best practice frameworks and the real-life nitty gritty. Many of these frameworks broadly approach the overarching principles that a robust security program should encompass and why these principles are important; however, they don't usually say specifically what kind of attacker behavior a defender should anticipate when building their security programs, nor do they detail how an attacker would work to thwart those vaulted best practices. Often, that's left up to the security practitioner to suss out themselves in their copious spare time.

Many systems make installing 3rd party software incredibly convenient; from packaging systems and well loved Linux distribution tools like Debian Apt to app stores and per-language repositories. Users are also often allowed to install browser extensions or plugins, which come from their own “store” and are just another type of software. For these reasons, and without forgetting containers, maintaining a software inventory that allows you to identify dangerous packages has become harder to do, but more critical to accomplish.

This video features Pat Haley, our Principal Sales Engineer, walking through the strengths and challenges of osquery, how osquery can be used for incident investigations, and how Uptycs can add value to an osquery deployment of any size.

Cloud computing is a $136 billion industry, and it continues to grow. As consumers become more technology-savvy, individual use of cloud services enters the realm of convention. Cloud migration is picking up speed because it introduces cost-effective and flexible services into a previously expensive technological sphere. However, cloud computing also gives rise to new security challenges.