Analyzing Security Events According to Threat Reputation

Overview

The Security research team in Cato Networks has developed analytical engines to tag malicious IP addresses, URLs, and domain names with a bad reputation. This reputation indicates that we discovered that the specific IP address, URL, or domain initiated suspicious or malicious activity. For example, malware C&C, network scanners, phishing activity, and so on.

The IPS engine in the Cato Cloud blocks network traffic that is tagged with a bad reputation and generates a reputation-based security event with the threat type Reputation.

The following screenshot shows an example of a security event with the Reputation threat type from Event Discovery:

ThreatEvent.png

Reasons for Blocked Traffic

When Cato's IPS engine identifies potentially malicious traffic and blocks it based on the threat reputation, the threat name field explains the reason why the traffic was blocked.

Values for the threat name field include, but are not limited to:

  • Domain reputation based signature - Phishing

  • Reputation IP based signature - Botnet

  • IP reputation based signature - Malicious IP

  • Domain reputation based signature - Malicious Domain

  • IP reputation based signature - Abuse

  • URL reputation based signature - Malicious URL

What are the different Threat Types?

Each Security Event generated within the Cato Management Application is categorised by a field called threat type. This field displays a high-level overview of the type of threat that Cato has protected you against, and provides you with an indication of any potential malicious activity.

The threat types which may be displayed in a Security Event include:

  • Spam

  • Brute Force

  • Scanner

  • Phishing

  • Policy Violation

  • Crypto Mining

  • Anonymizer

  • DoS

  • Network Scan

  • Vulnerability Scan

  • Information Disclosure

  • Privilege Escalation

  • Reputation

  • Remote Code Execution

  • PuP

  • Web Application Attack

  • Malware

  • Malicious Browser Extension

Sample Threat Reputation Security Event Workflow

  1. The Security research team identifies that a domain is potentially a source of malicious attacks.

  2. The domain is tagged with a bad reputation and the IPS engine is updated.

  3. An end-user tries to access the domain, and IPS blocks the connection and generates a Security event with the threat type Reputation.

What's the Size of Cato's Threat Database?

The Threat Database at Cato Networks is constantly evolving in line with the ever-changing threat landscape. We continuously improve the size and scope of our threat detections to ensure maximum protection for our end customers. For representative figures, as of July 8th 2021 we currently have, but are not limited to:

  • 750+ million domains and 32+ billion URLs classified

  • 80+ site categories, including high-risk categories

  • 6 million dangerous IPs correlated with URLs

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